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Imitations 



CELEBRATED AUTHORS; 



OR, 



IMAGINARY REJECTED ARTICLES. 



FOURTH EDITION. 






LONDON : 
PUBLISHED FOR HENRY COLBURN, 

1844. 



ff» 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

An Unsentimental Journey. By Elia. - C. L. 1 

Rich and Poor. A Letter from William Cobbett 
to the Ploughboys and Labourers of Hamp- 
shire. - ---------- -W. C. 31 

To-Morrow. A Gaiety and Gravity. By one of 

the Authors of Rejected Addresses. - - H. S. 65 

Demoniacals. (Posthumous.) By Childe Harold 

The Token. -------- 79 

Remonstrance. ------- 82 

Stanzas. _-__--_-_ S5 

Dining Out. By one of the Authors of Re- 
jected Addresses. - - ------ H. S. 87 

Letters on Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet. J. W. Ill 

Grimm's Ghost. The Culpeppers on the Con- 
tinent. By the other Author of Rejected 
Addresses. ---------- J.S. *141 

Spirit of the Age. Portrait of William 

Hazlitt. - - -------- W. H. 165 

London Letters to Country Cousins. - P. G. P. 209 

Brother Jonathan. Rejected from the Edin- 
burgh Review. -------- F.J. 261 

Boccaccio and Fiametta. A Tale of the 

Greenwood-Shade. - - ------ L. H. 313 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 



AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 



Reader, thou art haply one of those persons who 
feel themselves bound in honour to earn (in their 
own estimation) whatever title it may please others 
to bestow upon them. If so, reading thyself every 
day addressed as " reader/' (not to reckon the 
flattering additaments of " gentle," " generous," 
" tasteful," " learned," " critical," and so forth,) 
thou hast doubtless felt thyself constrained in con- 
science to prove the validity of thy title, by perus- 
ing every Work '(so we puny moderns are minded 
to denominate our poor, pigmy productions) that 
comes before thee in a questionable shape : mean- 
ing thereby, every one that thou art in the least 
likely to be questioned about, as to whether it has 
been perused by thee, or not. In this case, thou 
hast perchance whiled away an odd half hour now 
and then, in turning over and tasting the leaves of 

e 2 



4 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

certain lucubrations, erewhile distilled by driblets 
from the adust brain of one Elia. 

I will suppose thou hast, at any rate. An author 
would drive a sorry trade indeed, if he were not 
privileged to suppose the case of his having readers. 
To nine out of ten it is the only means of securing 
any. And even to the tenth it is much the same. 

Thou hast read Elia, then, and art therefore not 
absolutely incognizant of the turn of his humours 
and oddities, and the character which habit and 
nature, uniting together, have succeeded (and failed) 
in impressing upon his mental and bodily man. 
I put it to thy candour, then, whether, being thus 
informed, if any but Elia himself were to come 
and make averment before thee, that they had 
encountered his pale face, and attenuated form, 
beyond the confines of his own England, thou 
wouldest not have treated the tale as an ingenious, 
albeit an ill-conceived fiction, and greeted the 
teller with a glance chiefly compounded of the 
incredulus odi ? 

Perchance thou sufFerest the equivocal happiness 
of being, like Elia himself, a pun-propounder : (for 
punster is " a weak invention of the enemy " of puns, 
and not to be uttered by one who honours them :) in 
which case thou wilt doubtless exclaim, "Elia in- 
continent ! it cannot be ;" and wilt add,— as Othello 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. & 

did when a charge of being similarly situated 
was made against his gentle mistress, — " I'll not 
believe it!" 

Thou art altogether in the right, and Elia him- 
self hereby thanks thee for thy well-placed confi- 
dence in his consistency. And yet Elia himself is 
at the same time constrained to assure thee, that 
thou art altogether as wrong as thou art right : 
for nothing is more easy (and hard) than to be 
entirely both, in regard to one and the same matter. 

Look at the transparent tegument (mis-named 
paper) on which these uneven words are ecrivated. 
On turning it over, thou mayest, by following the 
fashion of the Hebrew, read them almost as well 
on the wrong side as on that which is not the 
right. Glance thine eye, too, towards the top of 
the page. It is dated " Calais." There is no 
gainsaying the fact. Elia is, like Bottom, " trans- 
lated " from his own modest, low-roofed parlour, 
looking out upon the little Ever-Green (here they 
would think it a strip of baize) that stretches 
before the plain, uni-painted door of his quiet 
domicile, in the suburban village of " Shacklewell, 
near Hackney, near London, England — " for such 
is the endless supererogation which he is obliged 
to inscribe upon the letter which he has just dis- 
patched (what a word, when they tell me it will 



O REJECTED ARTICLES. 

not reach her these three days !) to his dear cousin 
Bridget — he is translated, I say, from the above 
spot (apt title, spot, when compared with the " in- 
finite space" of which at present he is denizen) 
to a magnificent Scene in the Play which seems 
to be continually acting here, called " Dessin's 
Hotel." 

Reader, if thou wilt accord me a more than 
ordinary share of thy patience, I will recount how 
this seeming inconsequentiality came about : for 
thy confidence in its unlikelihood merits my confi- 
dence in return. 

As I have begun supposing for thee, I may 
as well go on. I suppose, then, that thou art 
not ignorant of the signal change which, a brief 
while ago, (brief it is by the book, though to 
me it already seems an age — so crowded has it been 
with thoughts, feelings, fancies, imaginations, and 
what not), took place in my terrene condition, in 
virtue of my becoming a " superannuated man." 
Some of the consequences of this change I have 
elsewhere related ; but the " greatest is behind." 

If thou hast perused, reader, the relation I have 
just alluded to, touching the first impressions of a 
man who just begins to feel his freedom press upon 
him, with a weight 

" Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life," 



AN UN -SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 7 

thou wilt readily conceive # * - # * . In 
short, something was evidently # ##.#-.; 
Besides which # # # # . 

And moreover, what so natural to expect from 
Elia, under extraordinary circumstances, as that 
which nobody who knew him would expect from 
him? 

Suffice it that I " made up my mind" to go. 
(The phrase is singularly "german to the matter" — 
that is to say, not within some hundreds of miles 
of expressing what it is meant to express : but let 
it pass.) So I clapped a shirt in my pocket; (it 
is hard that we cannot do the simplest of actions 
without incurring the suspicion of being imitatores 
servum pecus : people will say I borrowed the 
idea, of putting a clean shirt in my pocket, from 
Yorick : as if the abstract idea of a clean shirt did not 
instinctively become apart of every man's conscious- 
ness, the moment he thinks of leaving home !) I put 
a shirt into my pocket; hurried a kiss, with no very 
firm or florid lip, on the faded cheek of my cousin 
Bridget ; (we have never been separated for twelve 
hours since we came together twice twelve years 
agone); got into the Shacklewell stage, as was my 
wont every morning for all those years ; and as 
wont also, when it set me down at the Bank as 
usual, I proceeded towards my accustomed haunt 



O REJECTED ARTICLES. 

in Leadenhall Street, and should assuredly have 
taken my accustomed seat on the accustomed 
stool, but that, just as I was stepping up, un- 
der the magnificent portico of that Palace of 
Commerce, I felt an ^accustomed weight — not 
upon my heart, reader : I declare to thee that that 
waxed lighter and lighter every step I approached 
towards the spot where its rest had so long been 
set up ; but — bobbing against the calf of my sinis- 
ter leg. It was the bundle that Bridget had 
squeezed into my pocket. This roused me from 
my reverie ; and I turned back, just so as to reach 
in time the great monster that was to bear me on 
its back, (not more against my will than that of the 
water,) to the shores of France. 

THE VOYAGE. 

I hate all Steam, and all that it can do ; except 
when it comes singing its soft sweet tune, from 
out the mouth of a half bright, half black tea- 
kettle, on a December evening fire. But above 
all I hate it, when, as I have chanced to see it 
once or twice, it gets possession (like a bad demon) 
of some otherwise dead hull, and drives it, scram- 
bling, splashing, heaving, straining, and roaring 
along, np our noble river Thamisis, belching forth 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 9 

fire and smoke, and invading, terrifying, and 
polluting the sweet solitudes of Twickenham and 
Richmond, with its hideous brawl. 

I once watched one of these new " infernal 
machines," as it came towards me while I was 
wandering under those fine old trees near Bran- 
denburg House ; and I perceived that the poor 
victim of Steam was straining itself against the 
water, and lifting its breast partly out, at every 
stroke of its relentless task-master ; just as a half- 
heart-broken stage-coach horse strains against the 
collar, up a steep hill, at the stroke of the whip. 
And yet the stroke came (as it does in the other 
case) as regular as clock-work. There was 
" damnable iteration '• in it ; it sent me home 
sick ; and I have hated Steam better than ever, 
ever since. 

And yet here did I find myself, at eleven of the 
clock on a sweet sunshiny day of September, in the 
actual clutches of this abhorred power ; prepared, 
nay expecting to be borne by it — to the clouds, as 
likely as not, in a clap of thunder ; and to come 
down from thence, scorched to a cinder, and hiss 
as I fell into the water, and sunk at once to the 
bottom like a bit of burnt coal ! 

When I am in good health, (good, I mean, for me,) 
and have my wits about me, I feel but one care con- 



10 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

cerning Death: it is that I may meet him not 
absolutely unlooked for, and in my own bed with 
the old dark crimson damask hangings ; and with 
my cousin Bridget not beside me. And yet here 
was I, willingly, or rather wilfully, putting myself 
in the way of half a dozen of the most hideous 
of all deaths, (for the name of Steam is not one but 
Legion,) without even having a choice in them. 

It was not to be thought of. So I seated my- 
self at once on the first projection that came to 
hand — looked down towards my feet — and as I 
heard the bowels of the great creature begin to 
grumble within it, and felt its body move be- 
neath me, luckily the thought came across me 
of Sinbad the sailor, when he was inveigled, by 
some unaccountable fascination, to trust himself 
on the back of the Old Man of the Sea. 

This recollection, by virtue of the associations I 
had connected with it, partly restored me from 
myself; and I did not return till I was called back 
by an indescribable jargon of tongues, as if some 
foreign Bedlam or Bank Rotunda had broke loose 
at midnight — from which I could gather nothing, 
but that "I was actually arrived in the port of 
Calais. But this was more than enough; so I re- 
signed myself into the hands of fate, under the 
form of a French waiter, and after a few ceremo- 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. II 

nies which I did not seek to understand, found 
myself in a spacious sleeping apartment of 



DESSIN S HOTEL. 

I am not the person to go gadding after other 
men's fancies. I have enough to do to keep pace 
with my own. I was never fond of " follow my 
leader," even at school. I would not follow, and 
did not want to lead. And yet, reader, I am fain 
to confess to thee, that peradventure if it had not 
been for Hogarth and Sterne, " The gates of 
Calais " would never have shut upon Elia ; and 
even if they had, the hundred harpies from its 
Hotels would in all probability have divided him 
amongst them, instead of one being permitted to 
spirit him away in the name of '-' Dessin" in parti- 
cular. 

To be sure there is, in regard to the latter 
point, something to be said for the determina- 
tion which the before-named one had evidently 
formed, as to the necessity of my following him, 
and no one else. " Sare — you shall go to Mister 
Dessin," he repeated, close into my ear, twenty 
times at least. And when a man shall do a thing, 
he must. So I went. 



12 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

I need scarcely tell the " travelled " reader, that 
on this first moment of my setting foot in a foreign 
land, I was in no disposition to note very carefully 
the localities through which I was led by the 
absolute person into whose hands I fell. It must 
suffice to say, that I retired to my unrest, in the 
midst of indistinct and confused visions, of an im- 
measurable Gateway, an illimitable Court-yard, 
an incomprehensible Coach and Horses, an unin- 
telligible Chambermaid, and an inaccessible Bed. 

My dreams on that night favoured me by being 
more fantastical than I have known them for 
many a long year : for, as I think I have other- 
where informed thee, reader, I am but a poor hand 
at dreaming. My dreams put me out of conceit 
of myself. Anybody might dream them. But on 
that night, methought, among other matters, that 
I suddenly sank into the sea, and was (Jonas-like) 
swallowed by a whale; and that the passage 
through his throat to his belly, where I lodged, 
was exactly like that between Lombard Street and 
Cornhill, where Mr. Myers the fishmonger lives, 
and that it smelt of fish much the same as that 
does ; and that, when I had got through it, I 
found myself in a great paved court-yard, the 
extremities of which I could not see, which was 
partly lighted by what seemed to be the creature's 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 13 

great liclless eye ; and that, while I was passing 
across its dreary spaciousness, I heard a number 
of what the children call crackers go offjust outside, 
and then saw, by the glimmering light, a sort of 
carriage like Neptune's conch come clattering in, 
drawn by three animals, (a-breast,) which seemed to 
be compounded of half Meux's dray-horses, half 
mermaids ; and from the side of one of which I 
could see depending that enormous sign of a Boot 
and Spur, which has so long delighted the eyes of 
all the urchins who inhabit the Borough of South- 
wark. Methought, too, as I looked up towards 
the ceiling of my new apartment, it seemed to be 
intersected by enormous black beams, just like 
my cousin's great barn at Mackery End, in Hert- 
fordshire, where I used to sit upon the wheat- 
sheaves, and read Burton : and yet I could see 
the stars shine through it. 

Then all of a sudden I heard an enormous ex- 
plosion, and found myself flying through the air, 
seated astride upon a great piece of burning wood, 
rudely carved into the form of a rocking-horse ; 
which I held by, exactly as John Gilpin in the 
prints does by the neck of his horse. And I re- 
member very well fancying, as I shot through the 
air, and got glimpses of the flaming tail of my steed 



14 



REJECTED ARTICLES. 



flaring out behind me, how the philosophers of 
London would proclaim me a Comet, and call it by 
the name of Elia ! 

Then, as suddenly, I found myself quietly seat- 
ed in a great unknown room, by the side of an un- 
known tent-like erection, beneath which was 
what bore some resemblance to a bed; and 
around were various objects, which I did not 
take the trouble to examine — especially as, in 
divesting myself of my nether garments, prepa- 
ratory to trying whether the seeming bed was a 
bed or not, I found that they came away piece- 
meal, and were in fact scorched to a cinder. 

This seemed to disconcert me more than the 
nature of the accident warranted ; and I got up 
hastily, to ring the bell, and call for another pair, 
just as I would have called for a pint of wine — (for 
I now seemed to recollect that I was at an inn) 
— when, taking hold of the great ring which hung 
to the bell-rope, I pulled it somewhat impatiently 
— and lo ! it seemed to produce as miraculous 
effects as the pull or cut of the Sultan, in the Ara- 
bian Nights, at the ring revealed to him by his 
faithful Vizier. Mr. Dessin's hotel seemed to 
stand before me for a moment, like a scene on the 
stage, and then, like that, sunk into the earth at 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. lO 

the sound of the bell I had pulled— the Gates of 
Calais (which formed part of the back scene) came 
clattering about the ears of their astonished keep- 
ers—the Sea in the distance was changed into the 
Strand, with its gas-lights and coaches just when 
the Play is over ;~-and the next moment I found my- 
self seated beside my cousin Bridget, in our own 
quiet parlour, and Betty was just entering to ask 
whether it was the bed-candle that I had rung 
for. 

My late friend Tobin makes Juliana say, (pret- 
tily enough, under the circumstances of the scene, 
I remember,) " we cannot help our dreams." But 
what is a great deal worse, we cannot help telling 
them. If all the above incoherencies had actually 
and bona fide befallen me, I verily believe, reader, 
I should have had too much respect for thy time 
and patience (to say nothing of my taste) to think of 
relating them to thee ; because there is nothing to 
be extracted from them in anyway tending to thy 
moral instruction, or even to thy mental delectation. 
But because they have not happened to me, and 
could not, I have been tempted to record them. 

This is one of the most unpardonable imperti- 
nences of which any of us are guilty. If I 
ever for a moment think that my cousin Bridget 
talks too much, or not wisely., it is when she 



16 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

is telling me of some strange dream that she 
has had. Nobody should ever tell their dreams, 

but C . Even de Q should leave it off, 

now that he has left off that which made his 
dreams so marketable a commodity. 

Travelled reader, I would fain have thee believe, 
that in the midst of my humours and oddities, I 
am not an altogether unreasonable specimen of 
the human animal — I mean in respect of those of 
his intellectuals by which he carries on the daily 
business of his life. Thou opinest, perhaps, that 
because I have hitherto been content (howbeit, 
" on compulsion," yet not the less sincerely there- 
fore) to pass my days within the atmosphere of 
the Great City, (for my retreat at Shackle well is a 
retreat from her noise only, not a recession from 
beneath that noble canopy of congregated clouds 
which constantly hangs over her head, queen-like,) 
— therefore I do keck and reluct at the taste and 
odour of any atmosphere which has the demerit of 
being more pure, and quarrel with every form 
that comes before me, not moulded on the accus- 
tomed model. 

In this thou deceivest thyself, and discreditest 
me. In respect of feelings, fancies, modes of 
belief, and the like, I do agnize a certain de- 
gree of wilful predisposition. But in what re- 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 17 

lutes to form, to matter, to manner, to taste, 
to sound, to smell, in short all pertaining 
to our sensuous and animal nature, I do stre- 
nuously assert my entire freedom from preju- 
dice and pre-occupation. What if I do cherish 
a somewhat inordinate passion for Roast Pig, 
and am even prepared (peace-lover as I am) to 
place spear in rest to prove the pre-eminence of 
that dulcet refection, over every other in the whole 
circle of my mundus edibilis ? Yet assuredly I 
speak but of my world. I am no mad-brained 
Quixote in this matter. Far be it from me to be- 
lieve, prima facie, much less to insist, that a sucking- 
Kangaroo, treated in a similar manner, may not be 
as good. (Perhaps my friend B. F. is able to speak 
to this point.) And if your Cannibal, who is " your 
only emperor for diet," were to twit me with the 
superlative savoriness of a roasted Christian, as- 
suredly I should not dispute the point with him. 
I am not in a condition to determine. I have never 
tasted one ; and according to the calculable probabi- 
lities of the case, never may. 

After this open confession, reader, thou wilt not 
see cause to admire overmuch, when I assure thee, 
that my morning ablutions were no less refreshing 
than usual, albeit they were performed from a 



18 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

pie-dish in place of that hemispherical receptacle 
which we employ for that purpose ; that my tea 
tasted not the less fragrant for being sipped from 
a cup that a bee might have mistaken for a tulip ; 
and that I did not fancy myself in worse than my 
ordinary health when I felt myself in better, 
merely because my braekfast was brought to me 
in my bed-room. 

In truth, whether that the sea air of yesterday 
has braced up the bands of my spirits, or that 
the entire novelty of the scene which I find before 
my eyes on waking this morning has loosened 
and set them vibrating, (for I give thee thy 
choice, reader, between the material and the 
moral theory), certain it is, that they are in better 
than their usual trim. And as I have often given 
thee the proceeds of their peevishness and want 
of self-controul, it is but fair that thou shouldst 
have thy share in their more " blest condition." 

But look not for any regular narrative from me. 
A series of events, even when, as my friend W. 
hath it, they are " linked each to each by natural 
piety/' is what I am altogether incapable of fol- 
lowing, even in idea. My intellectuals have, at 
some period or other of their existence — whether 
before they appertained to me, the man Elia, or 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 19 

since, I guess not — undergone a sort of disj oint- 
ment or dislocation, which has shut up some of 
those alleys or avenues by which the several apart- 
ments communicated with each other and formed 
a suite. And the consequence is, that though 
each room may be as well adapted to its ap- 
pointed use as another's, and may be as fitly fur- 
nished, (though I say not that they be so), yet 
many of them can only be come at by out-of-the- 
way means — such as climbing in at the window, or 
dropping down the chimney. 

Touching the sky of France, and the atmos- 
phere that fills its blue breadth, I like them well, 
as a change. They seem to breathe into me a 
buoyancy, (why not write it 603/ancy?) that I 
have not lately felt, (I confess it), even in the 
greenest of the green places that neighbour my 
suburban home ; or in the pleasant fields of Hert- 
fordshire, or of more distant Devon. It is as if 
they were impregned with a vinous spirit, drawn 
forth by the glances of that " hot amorist/' the 
Sun, from the innumerous vine-clad vallies on 
which he looks in his lightsome course. In England 
the open air, when it is open, never fails to still 
that restless stir " which hangs upon the beatings 
of the heart." It hushes it, as a nursing-mother 

c2 



20 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

hushes her infant, <c while pap content is making." 
(I speak of it at its best.) We can fall asleep 
in its arms ; or fancy that we are sleeping — which 
is better. It is lulling sweet, and soft ; balmy,as 
if distilled from the breath of flowers. It is 
dream-compelling — the mother of sweet medi- 
tations. When all wrapt about by it like a soft 
garment, we feel that 

" If it were now to die, 't were now to be most happy :" 

so full and sure is the bliss — so quiet, yet so con- 
summate. But here — hey for old Ben's " New 
Inn, or the light of heart !" No dreaming here 
— no meditations — no mild melancholy — no plea- 
sant despondencies. And as for dying, it is a 
thing clean out of the question. It cannot be. 
Death himself seems dead and gone. He could 
not live upon such life-creating food. He is 
fairly starved out. Or if he comes at all, it 
must be '". like a thief in the night." There can 
be no such thing as dying in the day-time, here. 

I never could make out what it was which 
created that anomaly in morals and manners, the 
French character. But I have tasted their air, 
and my difficulties have melted away into it. 
I am a Frenchman myself! I go about on the 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 21 

tips of my toes ; and move my arms from my 
sides " with an air ;" and hum snatches of old 
French tunes,- and step aside when I meet the 
blooming peasant women in the market-place, — 
gracefully bowing the head of my imagination as 
they pass, and scattering flowers (of fancy) in 
their path. I must return incontinently ; or there 
will be two Elias — which were too many ; and 
yet not one — which were too few. 

Let me, however, set down a few notes, as me- 
morials of the danger I have run, of losing my 
identity, and becoming " sophisticated." And 
first, let me do justice to M. Dessin's Hotel. It is 
an Inn for the Titans to have stopped at. Its court- 
yard is like one of the great Quadrangles at Oxford, 
in all but the stillness and the green. It is, to 
other inns, what the India-house is to other count- 
ing-houses. It seems built in mockery of us 
puny moderns ; and it were idle to inquire if it is 
ever full, — for if every room were occupied it 
would still be empty. — Sallying forth from its 
great gateway into the street, (of which a tenth part 
of the Hotel forms half,) you feel "cabinned, 
cribbed, confined," — as when passing out of Lin- 
coln's-inn-fields into Turnstile. If M. Dessin 
could be prevailed on to build a Church in the 
centre of the court-yard, and turn one of the 



I'Z REJECTED ARTICLES. 

rooms into a Theatre, it would be a complete 
thing;. . 



THE MARKET-PLACE. 

It is Saturday, and Market-day ; and if, reader, 
thou art not susceptible of Market-day in a great 
country-town, thou art not for Elia's money ; or 
rather he is not for thine. It is among the 
prettiest sights in nature : in the nature of art, I 
mean. Such nut-brown faces, with the red bloom 
breaking through them ! Such teeth, shining 
forth through such lips ! Such clean clothes, and 

such fly caps ! I have not, like de Q , been 

a great frequenter of markets — especially London 
ones, at night. But of all the markets that I 
have seen, commend me to this one of Calais. If 
all England can shew a dozen such sights, once a 
week throughout the year, it is a better place 
than I think it — which is much. And if every 
great town in France can shew such a one, it is a 
better place than anybody thinks it — which is 
much more. 

In passing from the Port last night, in custody 
of the commissioner (so the little ragged rogue 
calls himself) whose will, or rather wliose shall 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 23 

it was that I should go to Mister Dessin's hotel 
in particular, I observed that we traversed a 
great open Square, shut in by high houses on 
every side, and empty of every living and dead 
thing — except the moon-light — which is neither. 
To-day that Square is one unbroken mass of 
moving life and beauty, and of that without which 
they are not worth having. I never saw anything 
so brilliant ; — not even the Dutch pictures of simi- 
lar scenes. Indeed, I never greatly affected pic- 
tures of this kind of scene. In a picture they 
can neither be idealized nor realized : and the 
merit of pictures consists in their doing either 
one or other of these, in regard to the scene or 
object they profess to represent. The old Italians 
often did the first, and the old Flemings the se- 
cond ; and the moderns do neither. But this 
Market is a better thing, in its way, than any of 
them ever did. Come with me into it, reader, 
and let us see of what it consists. 

On first entering it, from the street where I so- 
journ, (yclept " Royal," on account, I suppose, 
of its containing the Prince of Hotels), it looks, 
to a general glance over it, something like what 
the great Tulip bed, in Mr. Smith's Nursery at 
Dalstorij must appear to the '- microscopic eye" 
of a fly — so intermingled are the colours of the 



24 ; REJECTED ARTICLES. 

peasant's dresses, so various, so bright, so un- 
broken, and so ever-shifting about as the breeze 
of busy traffic passes over it. It is less dense 
and less lively than elsewhere, here, where we are 
entering ; because here, you see, the grain is ex- 
posed ; which asks for room, and does not go off 
so quickly as the more ready edibles. What a fine 
patriarchal look dwells in the sun-burnt cheeks 
and snow-white forehead of that old peasant, who 
stands erect behind his open-mouthed sack, wait- 
ing his turn for a customer ; for there is no noisy 
rivalry here — no bullying or cajoling you into 
buying, whether you will or not. Those younger 
ones, too, that stand beside and about him, each 
behind his sack ; what noble heads some of them 
have ! They might have been bred up with 
Guiderius and Arviragus. Nay, you might select 
enough from among them to stand for a Cartoon 
of Joseph and his brethren — each with his sack. 

Turning to the right, here, on this raised spot 
in front of the handsome old Town-hall, are spread 
out the few varieties of country crockery-ware 
which these primitive people need for their simple 
purposes ; but on which the brouze busts of Guise 
and Richelieu seem to look down with infinite 
contempt. You may save yourself the trouble of 
telling that aged crone, there, who sits in the 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 'ZO 

little watch-box, waiting to sell them, that there 
is not one object among them all of which the use 
could be conjectured in any state of society ap- 
proaching to civilization ; for if you do she will 
only return you a faint smile, of which both you 
and she would be equally puzzled to make out the 
meaning. 

But pass we on towards the heart of the busy 
scene. In the midst of all, and almost from end 
to end of the Square, stands a row of as fine 
specimens of the human animal as eye ever looked 
upon. Flesh and blood can go no farther than 
this. Set it down in thy tablets, reader, that 
these are your only symptoms of health and con- 
tent. Whatever looks different from this, is not 
as it should be, however taking it may be to our 
effeminate tastes, and vulgarly refined asso- 
ciations. 

I never saw. any thing like these people before. 
And yet the instant I look at them the truth 
comes upon me as if by instinct. This is the 
real thing. All else is sophisticate. Such clear 
and spacious brows — such brilliant yet innocent 
eyes — such apple cheeks, as hard, as red, and as 
round — such mouths, made up of the good tem- 
per which grows out of content — such ripe, unrc- 
luctant lips — such unconscious teeth — and withal, 



26 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

such an air of happy independence, overflowing 
every now and then into sparkling streams of 
mirth ; — all this, I freely confess to thee, reader, I 
never witnessed before. I do not know how it 
may be with thee ; but for me, it has filled me 
with a serious joy, interfused with a still more 
serious melancholy and misgiving, which I do not 
very well know how to entertain. We, in England, 
cannot shew such a sight as this for our lives. 
And if a state like this of France can shew it, at 
a stone's throw from our shores, and after all that 
she has suffered and performed, there must be 
f* something rotten" in — but hold, hold, my gentle 
friend, Elia ! if thou lovest me (or thyself) hold ! 
Let thy wild fancy intermeddle as it will with all 
things else ; but let it leave Politics to patriots, 
parrots, and popular preachers. Shun it as thou 
wouldst a pestilence. Knowest thou not the 
wreck and ruin it has wrought among thy dearest 
friends ? Has it not made * # * # * but let us 
have done with it. 

These beautiful realities, from which we for a 
moment turned away so idly, are butter-women. 
Each is standing (not sitting) behind a milk-white 
wooden receptacle, over which she bends grace- 
fully, with a hand on each knee, and the cover 
of which she lifts up on the approach of a cus- 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 27 

tomer, and discloses her little store. It may be 
worth, perhaps, altogether — including the basket 
of eggs which always accompanies it — as much 
as we (erewhile) clerks used to give for our daily 
mutton chop and pint of wine, at a paltry tavern 
in the city. And yet she who owns it reckons 
the mere profit on it — which she has already 
realized in imagination — a little possession. And 
that she gets more than " a living" upon the in- 
terchange of it, is evident from the tasty trim- 
ness of her attire, its delicate cleanness and pro- 
priety, and above all from those great yellow gold 
ear-ornaments (" tops and drops," I remember we 
used to call them, when they were in vogue among 
us) that hang down from her ears to her very 
shoulders, where they rest. Her attire is fashioned 
as follows : and it differs from all her tribe only 
in the relative arrangement of its colours. On 
the body a crimson jacket, of a thick, solid tex- 
ture, and tight to the shape ; but without any 
pretence at ornament. This is met at the waist 
(which is neither long, nor short, but exactly 
where nature placed it) by a dark blue petticoat, 
of a still thicker texture, so that it hangs in large 
plaits where it is gathered in behind. Over this, 
in front, is tied tightly round the waist, so as to 
keep all trim and compact, a dark apron, the 



28 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

string of which passes over the little fulled skirt 
of the jacket behind, and makes it stick out 
smartly and tastily, while it clips the waist in. 
The head-gear consists of a sort of mob cap, 
nothing of which but the edge round the face can 
be seen, on account of the kerchief (of flowered 
cotton) which is passed over it, hood fashion, and 
half tied under the chin. This head-kerchief is 
in place of the bonnet — a thing not to be seen 
among the whole five hundred females who make 
up this pleasant show. Indeed, varying the 
colours of the different articles, this description 
applies to every dress of the whole assembly ; ex- 
cept that in some the fineness of the day has dis- 
pensed with the kerchief, and left the snow-white 
cap exposed ; and in others, the whole figure (ex- 
cept the head) is coyishly covered and concealed 
by a large hooded cloak of black cloth, daintily 
lined with silk, and confined close up to the 
throat by an embossed silver clasp, but hanging 
loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds. 
The petticoat is very short ; the trim ancles are 
cased in close-fit hose of dark, sober, slate colour ; 
and the shoes, though thick and serviceable like 
all the rest of the costume, fit the foot as neatly 
as those which are not made to walk in. 

I declare these picturesque people (the epithet 



AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 29 

belongs to them more than to any I ever saw, for 
they look as if they had just walked out of pic- 
tures) have made quite a delineator of me. I 
never was so descriptive before. How sayest 
thou, reader? This is the age of authors who 
write with the pencil instead of the pen. Shall I 
enlist myself among the number, and issue pro- 
posals for publishing by subscription a set (of all 
things in the world) of " French Scenes and Cos- 
tumes V I, who do not pretend even to see, 
much less to make others see, any thing more 
of human life, and its results, than those little 
obliquities and excrescencies which start out from 
the strait line and dead level of it, and are over- 
looked by its other spectators? To me, those per- 
sons and things which are like other persons and 
things, are like nothing — or they are nothing, for 
I do not observe them long enough to see them. 
They slip off my sensorium without making any 
impression upon it. 

No ; I may, perhaps have given, above, an in- 
telligible account of a common thing ; because to 
me it was not common, and because, moreover, there 
is something in it which, if I mistake not, is es- 
sentially characteristic and peculiar. But I must 
stop in time, or I shall put in jeopardy any little 
credit I may have, gained for seeing what others 



30 REJECTEE! ARTICLES. 

do not, by putting down as strange and worthy 
of record what every body else regards in the 
light of a level common-place. I will therefore 
leave thee, reader, (and thou canst scarcely be on 
a spot better adapted to provide thee with a few 
hours, of innocent delectation), in the midst of the 
grand Place of Calais, on the Market-day of the 
first Saturday in September, eighteen hundred and 
twenty -five ; — assuring thee, in all sincerity, that 
if thou lookest about thee with an observant eye, 
and a mind made soft by sympathy with the 
crowd of happy humans that surround thee, thou 
shalt carry away a throng of impressions that will 
stand thee in better stead, in thy passage through 
this valley of {not <( the shadow of death," but) 
the sunshine of life, than will, though he should 
write till doomsday, all the crude thoughts, and 
dreamy fancies, and wild imaginations, and super- 
subtle distinctions — all the false truths, and the 
true falsehoods of thy sincere well-wisher, 

E r, i a . 



RICH AND POOR. 

A LETTER FROM WILLIAM COEBETT TO THE PLOUGHBOYS AND 
LABOURERS OF HAMPSHIRE. 



RICH AND POOR. 



A LETTER FROM WILLIAM COBBETT 10 THE PLOUGHROYS AND 
LABOURERS OF HAMPSHIRE. 



MY HONEST FRIENDS AND FELLOW COUNTRYMEN, 

1. I happened to be down in your parts the 
other day, about a little Turnpike business— 
(perhaps you've heard of the pretty game I've been 
playing up lately, among the rascally Jews who* 
have got all the London Turnpike Trusts into their 
hands, and are filling their own pockets by pick- 
ing those of other people) — I say, happening to 
be down in the neighbourhood of Botley, I took a 
little pains to find out whether you are as well 
off now as when I was living among you ; and 
I was sorry to hear sad complaints about you 
from some of my old farming friends. 

2. Times are a little changed with the land- 
lords and the farmers since then, to be sure — 



34 ■ REJECTED ARTICLES. 

thanks to the Paper Money and the Corn Bill ; 
as I told them over and over again it would be. 
And when times change for the worse with them, 
they are not very likely to change for the better 
with you. When the head and body are cold, 
the hands and feet are seldom very warm. It is 
as I said it would be, years ago. There is'nt 
work for half of you ; and those that there is 
work for don't get half paid ; and the old ones 
among you are obliged to take up with the work- 
house ; and the young ones to break stones to 
mend the roads, that the rich parsons and par- 
liament-men may roll along smoothly, as they 
loll their lazy carcases back in their fine carriages 
— one of which, by the bye, and the cost of its 
keep, would provide twenty of you and your 
families with wholesome food, warm clothing, 
and a nice little snug cottage over your heads, 
for twenty years to come ! 

3. I hear too that some of you have actually 
the audacity (so the said parsons and parlia- 
ment-men think and call it) not to be content 
with this amusing occupation of everlasting 
stone cracking; or even to be quite satisfied 
with holding the plough from morning till night 
for ten pence a-day ; and have been trying to 
better yourselves by making your way up to 



RICH AND POOR. 35 

town to get places. Now this information, my 
good lads, is what has tempted me to put aside 
many other important matters that I had in hand, 
and address you the present letter. 

4. And so, because matters are going a little 
hard with you, and your accustomed labour will 
not procure all that you would like to have, (and 
that, I admit, you ought to have,) you are get- 
ting tired of your present condition, and hanker- 
ing after others that you ought to be proud of 
knowing nothing about. Because ploughboys 
and labourers don't get quite so much as they 
used to do, and as you hear is to be got by other 
occupations, you begin to think that ploughing 
and labouring are not the best kinds of work for 
those whose lot it is to work for their bread. 

5. But I should be glad to know how you 
can change your condition for a better. What 
occupation is more honourable than husbandry? 
What is more manly, more healthful, more 
pleasant ? I tell you what, my lads, I shrewdly 
suspect that some of your rantipole Squires have 
been filling their houses with visiters from London 
for the sporting season, who have brought down 
with them a pack of grooms, valets, lacqueys, and 
other lazy hounds, and that these chaps have got 
among you at the Alehouse, while their masters 

D.2 



36 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

were getting drunk together at the Hall, and have 
instilled some of their cursed notions into your 
heads, about the pleasures of a London life, and 
the delights of having large wages and little work, 
and of being dizened out in flashy clothes, and 
riding behind their masters, or perhaps sitting 
cheek-by-jowl beside them, in some gimcrack 
gingerbread gig, so that nobody but themselves 
can tell which is which ! 

6. But do you pretend to have English blood 
in your veins, and yet tell me that this is a life 
fit for an Englishman ? Would you, who rise 
with the sun, and sally out into the sweet morn- 
ing air, and having driven your team a- field, 
seize the smooth-rubbed handle of your glitter- 
ing plough, and whistle at your work till break- 
fast time, while the blackbird is whistling back 
to you from the copse, the lark singing merrily 
in the sunshine above your head, and the whole- 
some steam of the new-turned earth is rising 
all about you, and mixing with the sweet breath 
of the hawthorn ; would you, I say, who can 
live such a life as this, and have lived it, change 
it to be groom of the stable and hold the stirrup 
to some lubberly lord, who is himself perhaps 
groom of the bedchamber and holds (I won't say 
what) to a king, who is himself lacquey to all of 



RICH AND POOR. 37 

us, for he receives our pay and wears our livery ? 
Would you, who when your day's work is over, 
are as much your own masters as any lord in the 
land ; and more ; and are at no man's beck and 
call ; (as no one who bears the name of man ought 
to be ;) would you change your condition, to be- 
come the servant of a servant's servant, and not 
be able to call your soul your own ; merely because 
you can get a few shillings in a year more wages 
by it ? Would you, I say, do this ? Then shame 
and short commons be your portion ! 

7. But no ; you would not do it. I know you 
would not. I have not lived in the midst of you 
all these years, and spent the greater part of them 
in trying to cultivate a spirit of independence 
among you, and all for nothing. You would not, 
I'm sure you would not, be content to be slaves 
to the rich, merely because you happen to be 
what they (the rich) call poor. 

8. But, my good lads, I'm almost afraid you 
don't properly understand the meaning of those 
words " Rich " and " Poor." And if you don't 
I'll be sworn the parson of the parish won't teach 
you. So I will. You must know, then, that the 
London Press — you've heard of the Press, I sup- 
pose ; the base, beggarly, lying Press ; the coward- 
ly, skulking, scoundrel Press; the Newspaper 



38 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Press ; you've heard of this thing, by means of 
which half a score cunning knaves contrive to 
gull, hoodwink, and bamboozle half the nation, 
(and would do the whole if it was not for me,) 
and cram their pockets with pelf at the same time. 
I wish I had time to put you up to a few of their 
tricks. But I'll just give you a notion how some 
of them are paid for what they do ; and then you 
may give a pretty good guess as to what it is 
that they do, to get paid after that fashion. It 
was but the other day that a fellow named Clement ; 
a great fat bull-necked pot-bellied chap he is now ; 
but I knew him when he was so thin and half 
starved that he could have crept in and out at a 
rat-hole. Well ; this fellow set up a thing called 
a ''Sunday Paper;" in which he used to collect 
together all the lies that had been hatched in the 
course of the week, and add a lot more of his own 
invention, and then persuade the people, by his 
puffing advertisements, to buy all this trash, and 
read it to one another of a Sunday, and fancy that 
they were as much concerned in it as if it had 
all been gospel. 

9. Well ; this fellow, I say, after having 
carried on a roaring trade in these lies for some 
time, found the money tell in at such a rate, that 
he bethought himself, if he could but contrive to 



RICH AND POOR. 39 

bring his pigs to market seven times a week instead 
of once, his profits would be seven times as 
much as they were before : for he's one of those 
people who have just sense enough to know that 
seven is seven times as much as one. Accordingly, 
the other day (that is a few months ago) another 
newspaper chap of the name of Perry; a paltry, 
pitiful fellow, who used to kick his heels in the 
antichambers of lords and dukes, and was some- 
times allowed to lick his fingers at the lower end 
of their dinner tables, on condition of puffing their 
parliament speeches next day ; this last chap, 
I say, happened to die just pat, as if on pur- 
pose, for the other (Clement) to pop into his 
place. 

10. But how was he to do this ? for places 
that are worth having are not to be got by ask- 
ing for. How was he to get into this place ? 
Why by cash to be sure. He determined to 
buy it. Buy a newspaper ! A thing, the success 
of which (putting merit and demerit out of the 
question) depends entirely on the person who 
conducts it ! and the person who had hitherto 
conducted this was dead ! But no matter : 
Clement determined to buy this place, left va- 
cant by the death of Perry. (And what place, 
by the bye, is not to be bought in London, if you 



40 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

know liow to set about making the bargain?) 
In short, Clement bought this defunct daily paper, 
called the Morning Chronicle ; for defunct it must 
be when Perry was so ; since the Morning Chro- 
nicle meant neither more nor less than a sheet of 
paper, on which he (Perry) chose to print any- 
thing that he had to say on any topic that might 
be the talk of the hour. Clement bought it, how- 
ever. And how much do you think he gave for 
it? for this is the point to which I wish to direct 
your attention. How much do you think he paid 
for it ? 

11. Why." fools and their money are soon 
parted; perhaps a matter of a hundred pounds;" 
I hear some of you say. A hundred pounds ! 
What do you say to forty thousand? forty 
thousand pounds!! ! — This is what Clement 
paid, for the privilege of venting his lies six times 
a-week oftener than he had hitherto done, under 
the name of the Morning Chronicle. Forty 
thousand pounds ! ! ! Enough to keep you 
and all your families from want, all through the 
county, if you were never to do another day's 
work while you live ! What do you say to this, 
my honest friends ? — You see lying is the trade 
to get rich by, after all. It is better than farm- 
ing, even when wheat is 905. a quarter. 



B I C H AND POO R . 4 1 

12. But I must get back to the subject on 
which I began to address you. I was saying 
that I'm afraid you do not exactly see the true 
difference between what are called the Rich and 
the Poor. And I don't know how you should, 
when it has been, any time these thirty years, the 
sole business of this base Press to throw dust 
into your eyes to prevent you from seeing the truth, 
and dirt at all those who, like me, are able and 
willing to shew 7 it you ? 

13. Ask, for instance, the Times newspaper; 
the hireling, hellish Times ; the bloody Old 
Times ; who calls me " old Cobbett :" the brute 
beast ! as if I was'nt young enough to be pretty 
sure of living to see him and all his base crew 
carted, and to spit upon their graves I Ask, I 
say, this infamous " Times " newspaper what's 
the difference between a '.' rich " man and a 
** poor " one, and the advantages or disadvantages 
of each • and it's ten to one but he tells you that 
the chief difference consists in the one being able, 
and the other not able, to buy his paper ! 

14. But the dolt forgets (or at least he would 
have you forget ; for I'll take good care he shall 
never forget it) that there is such a writer as 
William Cobbett in the world ; who glories, and 
ever will, in telling the truth to those who cannot 



42 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

afford to purchase it, even if there were any one 
else to offer it them ; and who thus puts an end 
to the distinction between " poor" and " rich/' 
and places them both on a level in point of in- 
tellect and knowledge ; which is the only real 
riches. The pay that pleases me is the good I'm 
doing. I don't deny that I like money well 
enough ; especially when it comes out of the 
pockets of those who have plundered it from 
the people ; for I know what to do with it better 
than they do : and what is more, I deserve it ; 
which nobody will say of them. But of the 
poor I scorn to take a penny beyond what is just 
enough to pay me for the paper and print of what 
I write for them. As for the writing itself, they 
are welcome to that. My Register is a nice little 
book containing thirty -two pages ; not a great, 
flapping, fly away thing, containing only four 
pages ; like the offspring of the vagabond Press. 
And yet the price of my thirty-two pages is 
sixpence, and the price of their four pages is 
sevcnpence ! ! 

15. Now mark me, my friends. All that I 
desire is, that in London (the Metropolis, as it 
is nicknamed by scholars; the great wen, as I 
call it, who, thank God ! am no scholar) all I 
wish by way of remuneration for my labours is, 



RICH AND POOR. 43 

that all the mechanics and artizans in this wen 
would form themselves into little clubs or com- 
panies, of either six or twelve, as their circum- 
stances will permit, and each lay down his penny 
or halfpenny (as the case may be) to buy my 
Register, and read it in turn, or to one another ; 
— that in every market town throughout the king- 
dom of England, Scotland,- and Ireland similar 
clubs be formed, and also that every tap-room be 
compelled (by its customers I mean) to take one 
copy, in order to have it at hand to refer to in 
case of need ; — and lastly, that every village and 
hamlet in the United Kingdom be supplied with 
one or more copies, according to its size ; the 
said copies to be paid for in any manner most 
convenient to the persons interested. The trifling 
profit that would be derived from this, is all I 
desire. As for the parlour people ; the parsons, 
the squires, and all their gang ; they may read the 
Register, or not, just as they please. 

16. But to the point, as to who is " Rich," 
and who M Poor," in the real practical meaning 
of these words. My Lord Lack wit, who lives at 
the great " Place," as they call it; (I need not 
point him out more particularly, for you know 
who I mean, well enough) ; this " Lord" has an 
income of forty thousand pounds a year ; or three 



44 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

thousand three hundred and thirty- three pounds 
a month ; or eight hundred pounds a week ; or 
a hundred and ten pounds a day ! ! This is, in 
round numbers, the amount of his income; of the 
money that he has to spend every day in his life 
throughout the year. There are several of these 
" Lords," elsewhere, who have twice or three times 
as much as this. But we will take him as an 
example, because you know something of him, and 
will therefore know whether what I shall have to 
say about him is true or not. 

17. This *' Lord," then, has a sum of money 
coming to him every day of his life, which amounts 
to as much as would keep four of your families in 
comfort for a whole year. Now, is this " Lord" a 
" Rich" man, or a " Poor" one? You laugh at 
the question ; and so would he if it were put to 
him. But if it were / who put it, and he had 
sense enough to understand and feel the reply 
which I should make to it, he would pretty soon 
begin to laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. 
But is he a " rich" man? I mean rich in point 
of mere money ; for the riches of comfort and 
content are not what we are now talking about. 
We shall come to that afterwards. Is this Lord 
" rich" in point of money ? 

18. Let us see. But, in order that we mav 



RICH AND POOR, 45 

understand each other clearly, let us start on 
this principle, that a man is " rich" or " poor," 
in proportion as he has much left, or less than 
nothing, after providing himself and his family 
with the necessaries of life. 

19. In the first place this " Lord" has to provide 
food, lodging, and clothes for a whole army of lazy 
hounds, who stuff and gorge themselves all day 
long, and half the night, and waste as much again 
as they eat ; and to pay them once a quarter into 
the bargain, for letting themselves live at his ex- 
pense and do nothing ; pay them each as much 
as one of you can earn by working hard from sun- 
rise to sunset. 

20. Mind, he must do this. No. matter what 
his inclination or disposition may be, he must 
keep up " a proper establishment." It is a 
" necessary" of his life. He would no more dare 
to do otherwise, than he would dare to let the 
parliament-men who sit for his boroughs vote ac- 
cording to their consciences. He is stingy enough 
where he dares to be so, heaven knows ! and so 
do you know too, I dare say, if you have ever 
had to go into his servants' hall. I'll answer for 
it, all the strong ale you ever got there would 
have gone into a nutshell, without drowning the 
maggot that lodged in it. And if the beggar never 



46 REJECTED ARTICLES. , 

goes away empty handed from his door, it is 
because he takes good care none shall ever get 
near it. And yet he must support this army of 
menials, because he would not be " a Lord" with- 
out them. It is they that make him " a noble- 
man," by calling him one. If it were not for 
them, neither he nor any one else would know 
that he was one. 

21. A " noble man," if it means any thing, 
means something that is better than us, who 
are of the common run of men. And is he 
this in himself? Look at his poor crazy carcass, 
as it lolls back in its easy carriage to take the 
air ; and then tell me — Is there any thing in 
that better than there is in yours, or in mine? 
Does it look better ? Can it act better ? Can he 
who owns it think better than we can, or talk 
better ? Is he more healthful, more honest, more 
happy? What can he do (of himself I mean) 
that you or I cannot do as well, if not ten times 
better ? In short, in what respect is he more of 
a man than we are? In what does he better, 
or a tenth part so well, fulfil the objects of our 
common existence ? 

22. " But look at his houses— his carriages 
— his horses — his servants — his liveries" — you say. 
Ay, there it is. In these he is a " Lord ;" and 



RICH AND POOR, 47 

consequently it is these that make him a Lord ; 
and without these he is none. These, therefore, 
he must have, if they cost him half his income. 
They are the " necessaries of life" of " a Lord." 

22. In the next place, he must keep a pack of 
hounds and a stable of hunters ; though he does 
not know a beagle from a bull-dog, or a fox from 
a ferret, and is as little at home in his seat in the 
saddle as he is in his seat in the House. He 
must do this. What would you say of him if he 
were to sell his dogs, and turn off his huntsmen, 
and put his hunters into harness ? What would 
his friends say of him, who are kind enough 
to come down from London every sporting season, 
to ride those horses and follow those dogs, and 
live through half the winter at his expense, to 
save living at their own? What would his ser- 
vants and country neighbours, the " gentry," and 
substantial farmers (if there be any left) say of 
him ? What would he say and think and feel of 
himself? Why that he was no longer " a Lord," 
to be sure ; no longer what his ancestors were 
before him, and what they made and left him. 
He must do it. He has no choice. 

23. Then this " Lord" has a " Lady ;" and the 
" Ladies" of " Lords," as every body knows, are 
not the persons to decrease their expenses ; for 



48 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

if they bring them much, they take good care 
to spend them more. I believe, for my own part, 
that this particular " Lord" of whom we are 
speaking, would be glad enough to pass the rest 
of his days o^iietly in the country ; for he has 
just sense enough to know that the racketings and 
junketings of a London life have already left him 
with " one foot in the grave ;" and he has too 
lordly a fear of death to be in any hurry to help the 
other there. But the " Ladies" of Lords (espe- 
cially when they are getting old) are not to be in- 
fluenced by any fear of this sort. To do them j ustice, 
they will have their swing, if they die for it, 
and even while they are dying for it. So long- 
as they can keep out of their coffins, they will 
not keep out of their card-rooms, and ball-rooms. 
And card-rooms and ball-rooms abroad beget 
card -rooms and ball-rooms at home. And for 
this there must be a home. And the " Home" of 
the " Lady" of a great " Lord" means something 
rather different from what you and I understand 
by the word. In short (for we have no time to 
dwell upon it) it means much the same as the 
" Home" of the " Lord" himself means in the 
country ; a place as big as a barrack ; plastered 
over from top to bottom with paint and gilding ; 
and beset at every step by another army of locusts, 



RICH AND POOR. 49 

in the shape of lacqueys, valets, butlers, footmen, 
coachmen, stablemen, housekeepers, lady's maids, 
housemaids, kitchen-maids, laundry-maids, and 
the Lord knows how many more besides : (not the 
" lord " of the house, by the bye ; for I'll be 
sworn he knows no more about the matter than 
if he had nothing to do with it. If he has been 
withinside half the rooms in his own house, 
and knows the name of a fourth part of his ser- 
vants, it is as much as he does !) 

24. This, then, is another " establishment" 
that is as much a " necessary of life" to a great 
" Lord," as bread and meat are to you and I. And 
the few " necessaries" that we have already seen 
go to the preserving of this " Lord's" life, must 
have swallowed up a pretty good slice of his in- 
come. But we have not seen half of them yet. 
You must know (for I'm sure you don't know it 
yet) that " people of fashion" — (and a " Lord " is 
always a person of fashion, by birth ; though in 
point of manners and habits he may be more vulgar 
than the boor that blacks his shoes) ; I say, 
" people of fashion" have decided among them- 
selves, that it is altogether inconsistent with reason 
and common-sense, that they should live either 
in London or in the country, for more than about 
two-thirds of the year. '* But if they live neither 



50 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

in London nor in the country, where are they to 
live?" you very naturally inquire. Ay; that's 
the question ; and a pretty puzzling question it 
is to them. Quite as much so as it is to you. 
But I'll tell you how they manage. 

25. This habit, of not being able to live at 
home during a certain portion of the year, has 
long been prevalent among them ; and they have 
at last contrived (or at least those who gain a 
base livelihood by administering to their idle, 
senseless, and unnatural wants have contrived for 
them) to establish certain spots, at a greater or less 
distance from the wen, and chiefly on the sea- 
coast, but so situated in regard to soil, aspect, 
&c. that nothing in the shape of vegetation will 
flourish near them. Now, where there is no ve- 
getation there can evidently be no " Country." 
Consequently these places (" watering-places" 
they call them) bear no resemblance whatever to 
either London or the Country, and are therefore 
chosen as the residences of " people of fashion," 
during about a third part of every year. 

26. But they do not build houses at these 
places. They hire them • hire them at an enor- 
mous expense, more than proportioned to that 
of their own houses; while their own houses, and 
all the lt establishments" belonging to them, (or 



RICH AND POOR. 51 

nearly all), are going on just the same as if they 
themselves were there. Add to all this the ex- 
penses of getting backwards and forwards from 
these " watering-places," (which are the more 
fashionable the more expensive they are to reach) 
and we shall have got at another pretty hungry 
outlet for our " Lord's" income. 

27. I fancy, if we calculate a little, we shall 
find that the forty thousand a year looks rather 
foolish by the time all these calls upon it have 
been answered. In fact, need I go any farther 
in my enumeration of the " necessaries" of a 
" Lord's" life? I think not. There are many 
'■* Lords" who cannot contrive to get these few 
" necessaries of life" which I have already named, 
with double the income of our lord. Not that they 
are therefore content to do without them. No 
— no — they continue to get them easily enough ; 
but not with their income ; not by paying for 
them honestly and fairly, as you and I are obliged 
to pay for whatever xoe get. They get them, it 
is true ; but they get them " by hook and by crook," 
as the phrase goes ; by means of a herd of rascally 
stewards, and attorneys, and money-lenders, and 
Jews ; by mortgages, and postobits, and policies 
of insurance, and the devil of usury knows what 

f. 2 



52 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

besides ; and by involving in comparative ruin 
those who are to come after them, and who ought 
by rights to receive the family estate bettered in- 
stead of beggared ; and who do so receive it in 
every case where the holder is an honest man. 

28. Mind, I am not complaining of, or lament- 
ing, this mode by which lords and people of fashion . 
" raise money,' 7 as they call it. I should as soon 
think of interfering, or feeling sorry, if & saw one 
thief trying to pick another's pocket in the streets 
of London. I am not complaining of it ; I am 
only telling you that so it is ; that this is what 
many " Lords" are forced to do in order to keep 
up those " establishments" which are necessary 
to their existence ; and that among others my Lord 
Lackwit is forced to do it. And the conse- 
quence is that he does not enjoy a moment's 
real peace of his lordly life, and that he cannot 
honestly call the coat he wears his own. 

29. And now comes the question with which 
we began our inquiry about him. Is he a 
" rich'' man? Is this " Lord" — with his forty 
thousand pounds a year, or three thousand three 
hundred pounds a month, or eight hundred pounds 
a week, or one hundred and ten pounds a day — 
is he a " rich" man? Rich even in the mere 



RICH AND POOR. 53 

money of which alone we are now speaking ? I 
will not insult your understandings by answering 
the question. 

30. Now let us give a look back at the other 
part of the inquiry, as to who is properly to be 
called a " poor" man ; still confining the ques- 
tion to money alone, and still keeping in mind 
the principle on which we set out, that a man 
is *' rich," or " poor," in proportion as he has 
much, or less them nothing, left, after having sup- 
plied himself and his family with what are, to 
them, " the necessaries of life " 

31. When I lived at Botley, there was (and I 
hope still is) an honest labourer, named Will 
Grange, who rented the little cottage at the corner 
of the lane as you turn down to the Holt. Every 
body at Botley knew Will Grange. He used to 
work for me ; and I was proud to see him in my 
fields. He was a credit to any master: if indeed 
it is not a piece of impudent presumption for any 
man to call himself the " master" of another, 
merely because that other chooses, of his own 
free will, to do certain things, for a certain price 
which is fixed upon beforehand. If a labourer, of 
no matter what description, does the work for me 
that I require and engage him to do, and that 
he agrees to do, I must pay him the price of his 



54 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

labour. I have no choice in the matter. I must 
do it ; for if I refuse to do it by fair means, he 
can make me do it. Thank heaven, we have still 
so much of justice left in our debased and degraded 
country. When he has done his day's work he 
can make me pay him the price of it, and need 
never do another for me while he lives, unless he 
likes. What impudence, then, for me to call 
myself the master of this man ! And what abject 
baseness in him, to call and to consider himself 
as my slave! For the word " master" is without 
a meaning, except when coupled with that other 
word, " slave." 

32. But to return to honest Will Grange, who, 
if I remember rightly, never called any man 
" master" ; though he was as far from fancying 
himself above his station as he was from feeling 
himself below it. Will Grange, when I knew him, 
was a labourer ; a day labourer. I need not tell 
you that this means, one who earns his livelihood, 
day by day, by the sweat of his brow. He had 
been this all his life ; and at the time I am speak- 
ing of he had been this long enough to have 
enabled him to get together just enough to pur- 
chase a cow and the furniture of the cottage in 
which he lived. He had, when I last saw him, a 
wife and four children, 



RICH AND POOR. 55 

33. Now what would my Lord Lack wit, or 
any other "Lord," or any of the herds of "nobility 
and gentry," as they call themselves, who live 
upon the plunder that comes out of the pockets 
of the oppressed people of this degraded country ; 
what would any of these " gentry" say, if you 
were to ask them seriously whether a man like 
Will Grange, a day labourer, with a wife and four 
children to support out of the earnings of that 
labour, is a " poor" man or a " rich" one? What 
would they say ? Why they would say nothing ; 
but they would first laugh in your face, and then 
turn away their heads in token of their contempt 
for the person who could ask them such a silly 
question. And they would do just the same if 
you were to ask them whether my Lord Lackwit 
is a '■ rich" man. 

34. But does this make or prove the Lord to 
be in reality " rich" and the labourer " poor?" 
Heaven forbid ! If any thing that they could 
either think or say could alter the condition of 
their " inferiors," (as they are pleased to term us 
who do something for our bread,) we should all 
of us be rather worse off than we are at present : 
which, heaven knows, need not be. But is Will 
Grange a " poor" man ? for I will suppose that 



56 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

he still is what he was when I knew him. Let 
us see. 

35. I have said that he lives in a snug little 
cottage, large enough to afford a warm shelter 
to all his family in the winter weather : in the 
summer they want none. I have said also that 
he has a cow. This he keeps, partly by letting 
the youngest of his little ones lead it in a string- 
about the green lanes ; (for there is no common 
in his neighbourhood) ; but chiefly by the pro- 
duce of the forty rods, or thereabouts, of garden 
ground which is attached to his cottage. This 
ground he cultivates entirely with a view to the 
keep of his cow ; because he has the good sense 
to know, that by so doing he contributes more 
towards the health and comfort of his wife and 
children, than if he could fill it ten times over 
with potatoes and '.' garden stuff." 

36. The cabbages and turnips that will grow 
in this forty rods of land feed his cow well and 
plentifully during the whole winter, and all that 
part of the summer when she cannot pick up 
her living in the lanes and by the road side. 
And while she is well fed his children never want 
a bowl of good wholesome skimmed milk ; and 
his wife can make as much butter with the cream 



RICH x\ND POOR. 57 

that comes from it, as will give an increase to their 
weekly earnings, at least equal to what two addi- 
tional days' work in the week would do. 

37. He is able to cultivate this bit of ground 
easily, by taking an hour now and then before 
and after his ordinary day's work, and by the 
assistance of his eldest boy ; to say nothing of 
his having all Sunday to himself: and theirs 
must be an odd kind of religion who would ob- 
ject to his employing a portion of that day, 
■* holy" as it is, to such an end : for what work 
can be holier, I should be glad to know, than 
that which contributes to the health and comfort 
of the offspring which God has given him ? 

38. This cow, which, observe, is almost entirely 
kept by the labour of honest Will, and which 
must therefore be looked upon in the light of the 
actual consequence of that labour, is the only 
direct source of profit which he possesses, exclu- 
sive of his own daily earnings. So that he is not 
to be considered as any other than an ordinary day 
labourer. Mind this ; because it is of consequence 
to my argument that you should not regard Will 
Grange, my example in this case, as any other 
than a common labourer, like one of yourselves. 

39. But Will has a wife; a good, honest, 
comely, industrious, neat-handed wife. And in 



/ 



58 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

no station of life, and least of all in yours, can 
a man be all that he may be in that station, ivith- 
out such a wife ; any more than he can be it with 
one of an opposite description ; with a slattern, 
a scold, and a gossip : for these precious quali- 
ties always go together. 

40. Now Will's wife, as every good wife ought, 
(I had almost said as every good wife does ; but 
I'm afraid this would be going a little too far, 
considering that not more than about sixty thou- 
sand copies of my Cottage Economy have as yet 
been circulated), I say that Will's wife hates and 
abhors all manner of slops and messes about the 
cottage ; and most of all she hates that worst, be- 
cause most mischievous of all messes, tea. 

41. As for the children, they do not know the 
taste of beer, much less of any thing stronger. 
And what little of it Will himself may stand in 
need of, to enable him to get through his daily 
labour more cheerfully, they can afford to buy : 
that is if they can buy such a thing as beer at all 
now-a-days, or get it any way without making it 
themselves. I'm afraid that, at the time we are 
speaking of, this excellent custom of brewing at 
home ; this custom so indispensable to the English 
cottager's enjoying the greatest share of health 
and comfort of which his station is susceptible ; 



RICH AiND POOR. 59 

was almost necessarily laid aside, in consequence 
of the monstrous weight of taxes which had been 
laid on all the materials of brewing ; and which 
custom, by the bye, I do not despair of seeing 
almost universally revived at no very distant 
day, when the cottagers shall have read and con- 
sidered what I have written for them, on this most 
important subject, in my Cottage Economy. But 
we will suppose that Will Grange did not, be- 
cause under the then circumstances of the times 
he could not, brew their own beer. All that they 
needed they could well afford to buy, out of the 
earnings of their cow* 

42. Then for bread, that of course Will's wife 
baked herself. If she had not, I should never 
have called her an " industrious" wife ; no, not 
even an " honest" one ; for a cottager's wife who 
chooses to- feed her children upon the pernicious 
trash that she gets at the bakers for about half 
as much again as she can make good wholesome 
bread herself, has no more claim to be called 
" honest," than any one has who defrauds others 
of what is their due. The married labourers earn- 
ings are in part the due of his children ; for if 
it were not for them he would not take the trouble 
of earning so much as he does. That mother, 
then, who squanders away those earnings unnc- 



60 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

cessarily (to say nothing of mischievously) robs 
her children of their due. This is what Will's 
wife never did, or I should not now be offering 
him and his family as an example to illustrate 
the point of inquiry that we are presently coming 
to. 

43. I must not dwell much longer on the de- 
tails connected with this point ; and I need not. 
It is sufficient to say that the inmates of Will 
Grange's cottage have seldom occasion to go else- 
where in search of any thing that they may 
want to make their lives easy, and even cheerful 
and happy. They have a few pigs of course ; 
which, with good management, not only give 
them bacon for every alternate day throughout 
the year, but, together with the cow, afford them 
plenty of manure for their little garden ; with- 
out an ample supply of which they could not 
get from it what I have said that they do get, 
namely, food for the cow during nine months 
out of the twelve. They have also half a dozen 
laying hens, which always afford them a hot din- 
ner, when the cupboard happens to run bare. 
And they have a couple of hives of bees, which 
give them honey enough for the younger children 
always to have a scrape of it upon their hunch of 
bread, before they go to bed. 



RICH AND POOR. 61 

44. This is all that Will Grange and his 
family have within themselves, to be sure. But 
then what an " all" it is ! I should like to see 
the " lord" who is half so independent of the 
rest of the world, as this honest labourer, and 
his industrious, healthy, and happy family ; who 
may almost be considered as the creators of all that 
is necessary to supply their daily wants, and who 
have nearly the whole of their earnings left, to buy 
themselves and their children decent and com- 
fortable clothing, and to lay by for a rainy day. 

45. It is true that, after supplying themselves 
with all the comforts which any of us require, 
they have not enough left to pay for their children 
going to school to the parson of the parish, to be 
taught to spurn at their station, and be ashamed of 
the father that fed, and the mother that bore them. 
It is true they have not surplus enough to let them 
sit at home idle half their time, and quarrel with 
one another to make it pass away the more quick- 
ly ; or if they like that better, the husband to loll 
at the alehouse and get drunk three days in the 
week, while the wife leaves the children at home 
to " mind" each other, and goes gadding about 
through the village, tea-drinking, trolloping, and 
tale-bearing. 

46. It is true they have not enough to tempt 



62 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

them to do these things, and half a hundred 
more, equally proper and praiseworthy, which a 
superfluity might tempt even them to do, be- 
cause it has before now tempted others, who, 
without that temptation, would have been as 
honest and as happy as they are. But, as we 
have just seen," they have enough and to spare 
for all the good purposes to which money can be 
applied in their station of life ; a station which, 
if it were what it might be from its nature, and 
what it ought to be according to the claims of 
natural justice, would be the envy of all other 
stations, and the glory and delight of all who 
belong to it. 

47. And now our question returns : Is Will 
Grange a " poor" man ? Again let me say, I will 
not insult your understandings by answering this 
question ; because I am sure that you have already 
answered it for yourselves, and answered it in a 
way that will I hope make it quite needless for 
me to advise you to give up all those idle crotchets 
that I hear you have got into your heads, about 
leaving your beautiful, healthful, and sweet-scent- 
ed fields, and coming up to " seek your fortunes" 
in this detestable sink of all filth, folly, and 
iniquity ; this standing and ever-increasing disease 
of our country; this wen; this London. Shun 



RICH AND POOl?. 63 

it, my honest friends, as you would shun a pest- 
house, or a parish work-house. You may take 
my word for it, that all the " fortune" you, with 
your habits, could ever find in London, would be 
poverty, contempt, and shame. By the bye, if you 
knew what London is, I need not have named the 
two last ; for there poverty means them both. 

48. But even if you were sure of earning, by 
coming here, three times as much as you can 
by remaining where you are, you would be still 
three times as badly off, because you would, in 
a month from the time you set foot in this want- 
creating city, have ten times as many to supply 
as you now have, besides losing the power of 
enjoying that supply even if you could get it. 
No, no, my good friends • stay where you are, 
and be as contented as you can till better times 
come. And come they must, one way or another ; 
and that shortly. In the mean while you may 
believe me when I tell you, that the only " rich" 
man is he who is healthy, honest, and contented 
with his lot ; (neither of which anybody is in 
London) ; and that the only " poor" man is he 
who has wants that he cannot supply. 

So says your sincere friend 
And well-wisher, 

William Cojbbett. 

Kensington, Sep. 1825. 



TO-MORROW; 

A GAIETY AND GRAVITY. 

BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF " REJECTED ADDRESSES.' 



TO-MORROW; 

A GAIETY AND GRAVITY. 

BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF " REJECTED ADDRESSES.' 



' To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." 
Macbeth. 



It seems but yesterday that I took occasion to be- 
stow a month's immortality upon '■' To-day ;" and 
I propose not to let To-day pass without doing as 
much for To-morrow. Perhaps I may devote To- 
morrow to performing a similar office for Yesterday. 
But this latter is more than I can promise, since it 
is the very essence of To-morrow that no one can 
tell what it will bring forth. 

Of all the days in the year, there is none so 
pregnant of wise determinations, flattering pro- 
mises, sage resolutions, and salutary reforms, as 
To-morrow. It is astonishing what projects are to 
be commenced To-morrow ; and it is still more sur- 

f 2 



68 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

prising what a number are to be brought to a con- 
clusion on the same day ! 

Judging from the innumerable tradesmen's bills 
that are to be paid " To-morrow/' one would sup- 
pose that some new source of wealth had been simul- 
taneously discovered by every small debtor through- 
out the world of credit, and that to pay were as 
easy and agreeableas to run in debt. 

As for the intended " calls" of To-morrow, if 
they should all be made they will all be to make 
over again ; for every body will be out calling, on 
every body. Then again, the " new leaves" that 
are to be " turned over " To-morrow, are more 
numerous than those " in Valombrosa's shade." 

In short, To-morrow is to be the day more "■ big 
with fate " than any that the sun ever shone upon ; 
and more is to be done in the course of it than has 
been done in any day since the world was made 
out of chaos. And, " not to speak it profanely," 
even on that day there was but form and entity 
given to what was before a confused mass of 
matter ; whereas To-morrow, thoughts, intentions, 
fancies, feelings, and imaginations, are to be me- 
tamorphosed into actual and tangible facts ; and 
what is more, a thousand events are to take place 
that will never take place at all ! 

What a world would this be, if all were ac- 



TO-MORROW. 69 

compiished in it that assuredly will be accom- 
plished to-morrow ! To-morrow A. will ask a 
friend to dine with him ; and B. will be as good 
as his word; and C. will commit no blunder; 
and D. will get a decision in the Court of Chan- 
cery; and E. will commence his new epic ; and 
F. will finish his ; and G. will begin to grow wise ; 
and H. will begin to grow honest ; and I. will be- 
gin to leave off writing nonsense ; and K. will 
keep himself sober ; and L. will not tell a single 
lie ; and M. will try to make himself agreeable ; 
and N. will not ; and O. will get over his own 
style; and P. will pay his long-standing tailor's 
bill ; and Q. will quarrel with a taller man than 
himself; and R. will begin to retrench his ex- 
pences within his income ; and S. will say a good 
thing ; and T. will tell one without spoiling 
it ; and V. will vote in opposition to his interest ; 
and U. will read this essay a second time; and 
W. will leave off wondering who wrote it; and 
X. Y. Z. will get a satisfactory answer to his ad- 
vertisement for a wife. 

And why is it that all these good things, and a 
thousand more, which will certainly take place To- 
morrow, never take place at all ? The secret is, 
that To-morrow, like " good bye," is easily said, 



70 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

and that most of us are content to let our good 
deeds appear under the guise of good words. 

Besides which, though every body talks and 
thinks of To-morrow as of a day that must come, 
and though it is as familiar in our mouths " as 
household words," yet we all feel that- it is only 
a word — that there is no such thing as To-morrow 
— that it is a day which cannot happen — a dies 
non. Who can explain what To-morrow is? — or 
where it is ? — or when it is? It is always coming, 
like a waiter at an inn ; and yet it never comes. 
The littla boys at school understand it best. They 
call it ■* To-morrow come-never." 

And probably this, after all, is the point of 
view in which most people secretly look at To- 
morrow. And, accordingly, they are willing to 
do anything in the world to oblige you — "To- 
morrow." " To-day" they really must be excused 
— they have so many things to attend to — but if 

you will but call To-morrow . And then, when 

you fancy that "To-morrow" is come, and you take 
them at their word — Oh, they really can't find 
time To-day — but " To-morrow." And then when 
that To-morrow comes — they are really very sorry 
■ — but " circumstances have transpired," &c. And 
thus it goes on for ever : 



TO-MORROW. 7] 

" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 

(and wise men too) 
The way to " To-morrow ! 

An ancient philosopher has said, that he is wise 
who has lived To-day. And it was wisely said. 
And his commentator has added, no less wisely, 
that he is wiser still who lived Yesterday. Let 
me, who am albeit neither philosopher nor com- 
mentator, not be accused of presumption, if I 
complete the trinity of wise saying, by adding, 
that he is wisest of the three who lives To-morrow ; 
for To-morrow we may live as we please, whether 
it comes to us or not. 

In truth, we have hitherto been considering 
this subject with a degree of flippancy which is 
scarcely appropriate to it ; for after all, what is 
To-morrow but that great Future to which we all 
look, and to which we are all hastening, on the 
swift pinions of Time, and must inevitably reach, 
even though we should succeed in trifling away 
To-day as we did Yesterday, and To-morrow as we 
have done To-day. The only truly wise man, is 
he who so passes To-day, that To-morrow may be 



72 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

anticipated if it come not, and improved and en- 
joyed if it come. 

In the present frightfully artificial and diseased 
state of society — with its ever-increasing cities, 
and its ever more and more deserted and despised 
fields, and groves, and solitudes ; — when all are 
rushing towards the plague-tainted spots, and 
crowding into them as if they were tired of health, 
and in love with disease and death; — when govern- 
ments are going about, under the guise of holi- 
ness, seeking whom among the weak and dis- 
united they may devour, and among the virtuous 
divide and destroy ; — when rulers are raking in the 
dirt of ages for pleas and precedents, whereby 
they may debase the people they have been put 
over, and lay their liberty prostrate at the feet of 
power ; — in short, when vice, luxury, and crime 
(to say nothing of cant, cajolery, arid cunning) 
reign triumphant ; and virtue, wisdom, and na- 
ture are laughed to scorn, and driven to seek 
refuge in the solitudes of woods and deserts — 
what should the truly wise man do, but live in 
that only world which is left him unpolluted, and 
of which he can make what use he pleases, by 
fashioning it after any form that his :"ancy feels 
inclined to — namely, the world of To-morrow — the 



TO-MORROW. 73 

great Future — "the all hailed hereafter?" Let 
me ask those who doubt the wisdom of living 
with a view to To-morrow rather than To-day, — 
Of what avail were all the riches which Croesus 
looked upon as the prime blessing of life — or the 
honour which was so honoured by Periander of 
Corinth — or the strength which Milo the Croto- 
nian boasted of— or the knowledge which Socrates 
worshipped — or the beauty which Orpheus adored 
— or the ideal world of Plato — or the prudence 
and forethought of Thales the Milesian — or even 
the supreme virtue to which Aristotle referred all 
happiness, and the happiness itself which Epi- 
curus alone thought worth living for — what were 
all these, unless with a view to To-morrow ? 

Would any one consent even to live through 
To-day, if he were sure that no To-morrow would 
follow it ? Alas ! To-morrow is not a matter to 
be trifled either with or upon. It is the best part 
of our existence ; since it is the only part of 
which we can be sure that it will be what we 
would have it be. Ophelia says that " we all 
know what we are, but we know not what we 
may be." But with all due deference to the 
wisdom of her simplicity, she was wrong in both 
clauses of h^r proposition. None of us know 
what we are ; and we all know what we may be 



/4 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

— To-morrow ; because To-morrow itself is but an 
imagination ; and while we are imagining it y we 
can just as well imagine ourselves into what we 
please when it arrives. True, it arrives at last ; 
and then we do not find either it or ourselves 
what we intended or expected them to be. 
But then it cannot be said that we have deceived 
ourselves ; because we cannot find out our error 
till to-day ; and then To-morrow is before us again, 
as fresh and promising as ever. 

In a word, those who would live to any good 
end in the present unnatural and over-excited state 
of society and manners, (to say nothing of the 
corruption in morals and the degradation in poli- 
tics), must make up their minds to forget Yes- 
terday, and take no note of To-day, but live in the 
future of To-morrow : for in the wise man's calen- 
dar there are but these three days, which include 
all time, past, present, and to come. 

But can they so live ? Can the unavailing Yes- 
terday be forgotten, and the imaginary To-morrow 
be enjoyed, amidst the feverish turmoil and the 
insane noise and distraction of To-day, as it exists 
in the centre and heart of society and the world ? 
Assuredly not. But " there is another and a 
better world" — the world of woods, and fields, 
and gardens, and groves, and streams — each de- 



TO-MORROW. 75 

partment of which is a world of itself, and peopled 
with beings who live only to be happy, and who 
are happy only that they live. In that world the 
soul may find rest for its wearied wings, and re- 
freshment for its exhausted powers ; there it 
may contemplate the future with a quiet and un- 
disturbed gaze, till at last it sinks softly into it, 
and becomes a part of what it looks upon. 

There are many other points of view in which 
To-morrow may be looked upon ; but I fear the 
reader will be of opinion that I have said more 
than enough of it for To-day. At any rate, I have 
exhausted my limits, if not my subject ; and the 
remaining considerations touching To-morrow,must 
be deferred till — To-morrow. 

H. 



DEMONIACALS. 

(posthumous.) 
BY CHILDE HAROLDE. 



THE TOKEN. 



To 



Lady, forbear the fruitless strife ! 
Would'st thou forget this solemn Token ? 
It may not be ! this holds thy life 
In bonds, that never can be broken. 

This consummated the deep vow 
Breathed at the marriage of our minds ; 
And by its power I claim thee now : — 
The silent spell thy spirit binds. 

I claim thee : — not thine outward beauty— 
That lost for ever its controul 
When thy thoughts wandered from their duty :- 
But thee — thy mind and heart and soul. 

G 2 



80 



REJECTED ARTICLES. 



How I once loved them ! Human love 
Was never felt more deeply pure ; 
But 'twas an effluence from above, 
That could not — ought not to endure. 

tt was too spiritually bright 
To mingle with a form of earth, 
Even tho' that form of seeming light 
Belied the dungeon of its birth, 

And breathed of heaven. — One fatal hour 
Hath changed all hours to come. Love's fled, 
And with it love-born bliss : — the flower 
Must wither when its root is dead. 

But not the less I claim thy faith : 
Unsought — unhoped for it was given : 
Witness the listening earth beneath — 
The watching stars — the breathing heaven. 

That deep-vowed faith thou canst recall 
Never ! — this simple ring of gold 
To thee is magical — its thrall 
Holds thee, and shall not cease to hold. 



DEMON1ACALS. 81 

Then struggle not— do force of thine 
Can break the bond — no art can sever 
Its links of adamant — thou'rt mine, 
Absent or present— now — for ever ! 



REMONSTRANCE. 



TO THE SAME. 



Pause ! pause and listen ! ? Tis a voice 
That was all music to thine ear ; — 
Now hear its deep-breath'd discords ! Pause- 
Listen, and think, and fear ! 

Thy hopes stand trembling on the brink 
Of a dark stream not to be cross'd ; 
One plunge, and they for ever sink ! 
Turn back — or thou art lost. 

Who hath done this? — With impious force 
To tear the spirit from its shrine, 

And call it marriage ! — 'Tis divorce ! 
Thy heart and soul are mine ! 



DEMON! ACALS. 83 

Need I recall that solemn hour ? 
Alas ! it will not be forgot. 
Twas brief and silent — but its power 
Hath fix'd thy future lot. 

Silent and brief — but its deep bliss, 
Though fatal now, cannot decay : 
The memory of that first — last kiss, 
Shall never pass away. 

Passion can work strange ends — a trance 
Comes over me- — it stills my pain. 
What ! tears ! — ay — let them flow ! — perchance 
You ne'er may smile again. 

Passion can work strange ends : I hear 
Accents, that seem to have their birth 
In the deep prophetic heart. — Revere 
Sounds that are not of earth ! 

" Dare not to struggle against fate ! 
" Or, with a guilty weakness, yield 
" To bonds that shall lay desolate 
" The path thy youth revealed ! 



84 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

" Else shall the merry bridal bell 
" Ring out a death-peal to thy joy ; 
" And every hope that fatal knell 
" Shall kill — but not destroy : 

" Their ghosts shall linger with thee yet, 
" Telling a tale of future years 
" That shall thy bridal pillow wet 
" With unavailing tears. 

" When thy friends wish thee" Joy 1" — the word 
" Shall sound like mockery to thine ear ; 
' And its dim echo haunt thy thoughts 
" Like a perpetual fear. 

" But last, and most of all, beware 
" The bridal kiss : — that seals thy doom ; 
" Changing so foul what else were fair — 
" A temple to a tomb. 

" That renders even repentance vain ; — 
" For as thy last faint smiles depart, 
" A cold, dull, everlasting pain 
" Shall settle at thy heart !" 



STANZAS. 



TO THE SAME. 



I dread to think upon thy fate, 
Yet all my thoughts will that way tend ; 
Forms of the Past they recreate, 
And with the Future blend. 

Love consecrates the marriage bed ; 
Without it all is guilt and gloom ; 
A living form linked to a dead ! — 
A spirit in a tomb ! 

Better be senseless dust indeed, — 
Of the vile flesh-worm's food a part,— 
Than live to pamper worms that feed 
Upon the living heart. 



86 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

To die is nothing ; but to feel 
A living death creep thro' thy veins, 
While hope yet lingers, not to heal, 
But aggravate thy pains ; — 

This is to neither live nor die — 

Suffering at one the worst of both. 

What desperate hope starts to thine eye ?- 
Beware ! — thy bridal oath ! 

^Besides — I only pity thee : 
Thy guilty weakness lost my love. 
On earth thou hast nowhere to flee ! 
No hope — but " Heaven above ! !" 



DINING OUT. 



' QUE OE THE AUTHORS OF REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



DINING OUT. 



'• ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



Dining out is an accomplishment in which we 
English do not excel. It demands a certain po- 
litic pliancy, both of mind and body, which we 
cannot boast. It is that one among the Fine Arts 
in which we are immeasurably behind our conti- 
nental neighbours. In fact we are the worst 
Diners- out in the world. We do not understand 
the principle of it. Even the South Sea Islanders 
understand and practice it better ; for when they 
go to a dinner party, it is for the express purpose 
of dining upon an enemy ; whereas an English- 
man, when he does not dine at home, dines upon 
his friend. The truth is, that in civilized society, 
Dining out has nothing whatever to do with eating 
and drinking. Who asks a man to dine out that 
cannot afford to dine at home ? — The thing never 



90 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

happened. It is altogether incompatible with the 
" scope and tendency" of dinner parties. 

Not that one can dine out without eating and 
drinking. But for that very reason, among others, 
eating and drinking are but secondary consequences 
of Dining Out, and are no causes of it at all. They 
are necessary concomitants of it, to be sure; just 
as tea accompanies talk in a party of elderly ladies, 
and as love goes hand in hand (for a little way) 
with marriage, in a youthful pair, of opposite sexes. 
But eating and drinking have no more to do with 
the immediate end of Dining Out, than love has 
to do with that of marriage, or marriage with that 
of love. 

In England, there is nothing to be done, or 
even undertaken, without a dinner party. From 
the governing of the nation to the goings on of 
the pettiest of its parishes, all begins and all ends 
in a dinner. Accordingly, there is no country in 
which dinner parties assume so pleasing a variety 
as they do here. We have dinners on all occa- 
sions, — from the Coronation of the King, to the 
Christening of the newest born of his subjects ; 
dinners in all places, — from the palaces of the 
peers in Saint James's, to the back-slums of the 
beggars in Saint Giles's ; dinners of all dimen- 
sions, — from the calipash and calipee of the 



DINING OUT. 91 

cabinet minister, to the pot-luck of the cabinet 
maker. We have dinners of all denominations : 
diplomatic dinners, and patriotic dinners, and 
pugilistic dinners, and parliamentary dinners ; 
cabinet dinners and reform dinners ; ministerial 
dinners and opposition dinners ; O. P. dinners and 
P. S. dinners; Pitt dinners and Fox dinners; 
election dinners, and theatrical dinners, and lite- 
rary dinners, and scientific dinners. — Is a minister 
to be ousted from his place ? The cabal is con- 
cocted and carried on at a dinner party. Is a 
million to be raised by a joint-stock company, in 
order that certain clerks and projectors may be 
able to dine in private ? — They must first assemble 
the intended sufferers at a dinner in public. — Is a 
chapel to be built, a charity founded, a school 
formed, an institution established ? — Ask the 
public to dinner, and it is done. — Does a friend 
want to borrow fifty pounds of you ? — He asks you 
to dine with him at a tavern, and pays the bill with 
your own money. — Even Mr. Owen cannot banish 
vice from the world without the aid of a public 
dinner — (nor with one either.) Nay — marriages 
themselves — which are elsewhere " made in heaven" 
— are here made at a dinner party arranged for the 
purpose ! 

All this admitted, one would expect that John 



92 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Bull, being so used to it, would make an excellent 
Diner-out. As we have happily had opportunities 
of meeting- him at nearly all the different kinds 
of dinner parties above alluded to, — as well as at 
numerous others " too tedious to mention," as 
the conjurors' advertisements have it, — we may 
perhaps occasionally introduce the reader to some 
of them, and enable him to judge for himself. 
And if he should object to this, that Dining Out 
in imagination is likely to afford but " lenten 
entertainment," he may be assured that it will be 
our fault if the reflection is not pleasanter to look 
upon than the reality : for it must be a very hand- 
some face indeed that does not look better in a 
mirror than out of it. 

The dinner party to which we now invite our 
friends shall be one of that class which is perhaps 
of all others the most characteristically English. 
The family of the Tibbs's move in the first 
circles of city life : in other words, they are never 
to be seen in the city at all, except when they pay 
an occasional visit of ceremony to. Saint Mary 
Axe, or " dine out" once in the season or so, at 
Devonshire Square : for they would not be thought 
proud, though they do reside near the Regent's 
Park! — The family consists, in the male branch, of 
Mr. Tibbs and his son Thomas. Mr. T. the elder 



DINING OUT. 93 

is a person " engaged in mercantile pursuits/' as 
his wife and daughters delicately phrase it ; but 
according to his own less ambiguous and ambi- 
tious version of the matter, he is a Manchester ware- 
houseman. To say that he was formerly a " ware- 
houseman" merely, without the " Manchester," 
and that in the very concern which he now owns, 
is to describe him as at once shrewd, upright, and 
not altogether without either pride, or prejudices. 
Mr. Tibbs the elder has a son and heir, who, in 
virtue of this latter quality in particular, is allowed 
the privilege of persuading himself that he has a 
soul altogether incapable of admitting the idea of 
printed muslins, and which holds brown holland in 
a natural abhorrence. Accordingly, he has received 
the best education that Dr. Drill could prevail 
upon him to accept, and is now near the end of 
his term in an attorney's office. 

The female Tibbs's are more numerous than the 
males, and not less worthy of historical mention. 
We must, however, touch upon the merits of each 
but very slightly, or we shall not be in time to 
assist at their dinner party. Mrs. Tibbs is by 
no means " of a certain age :" which is saying, 
in other words, that she is of a very certain age, 
and doesn't care who knows it. She is moreover 



94 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

unaffectedly fond of her children ; so that there 
is nothing in the shape of rivalry between them. 
But she is fond of herself too ; for she is in the 
habit of cherishing a very natural notion, that, 
if one sets the example of not loving oneself, it 
would be strange indeed if others did not follow 
it ; seeing that we ourselves must necessarily be 
the best possible judges of our own deserts. The 
best of Mrs. Tibbs's self-love is, however, that she 
is apt to consider her husband and children, and 
even her house and furniture, as part and parcel 
of herself, and is satisfied that in admiring them 
you are admiring her. It must be confessed, in 
passing, that in this Mrs. T. is more philosophical 
than she is aware of: for to philosophy she 
makes no pretensions whatever, and thinks that 
in the family of an English merchant it would be 
altogether out of place. 

Mrs. Tibbs has three daughters ; Juliana and 
Frances, who, being women grown, Mrs. Tibbs 
considers as entitled to be called " the girls ;" and 
Jessica — who being born five years after the 
youngest of the others, is destined to remain " the 
child" till her sisters cease to be " the girls." The 
said " girls" are, in their own house and their 
own opinion, considered as very Jine young women : 



DINING OUT. 95 

which epithet, being interpreted, signifies that 
they are somewhat coarse. In fact, their Irish ad- 
mirer (for he professedly admires them both at 
present) Captain Castabout, is fain to confess 
that their forms are constructed on a scale of con- 
siderable magnitude, and that their ruddy com- 
plexions indicate a degree of health amounting to 
what is rudely enough denominated rude : so much 
so, indeed, that Miss Priscilla Paleface, who re- 
sides on the opposite side of the Place, cannot 
abide to stand at the window when they go out : 
she says they look as if they were painted, without 
being so; which she thinks extremely vulgar at 
best — not to say indecent. 

In regard to the mental qualities and accom- 
plishments of the two elder Miss Tibbs's — or as 
the boards at the young ladies' seminaries insist 
on having it, the Misses Tibbs — we have but 
little to report at present. Suffice it that they 
speak French with a propriety of accent peculiar 
to English young ladies who have visited Paris; 
know enough of Italian to be able to explain 
to Captain C. (who never fails to make the in- 
quiry) that "Ah! perdona," means " I beg your 
pardon ;" play the piano with a perseverance that 
is truly praiseworthy, and a spirit that some of 
their hearers characterize by the epithet which, as 

h2 



96 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

we have hinted above, others apply to their appear- 
ance of health ; and sing Moore's melodies in a 
highly decorous style : by which latter we would be 
understood to indicate that their execution of these 
very " taking airs" is in no degree calculated to 
endanger the morals of their hearers. Finally, 
Juliana, the eldest Miss Tibbs, may, by particular 
entreaty, be occasionally prevailed upon to bestow 
her embraces on one of Erard's harps ; which pro- 
cess she is accustomed to accomplish in so edi- 
fying a fashion, that Captain C, who is gene- 
rally present on these occasions, never fails to turn 
round to his next male neighbour once or twice 
during the exhibition, and favour him with a 
knowing look, which the other, unless he happens 
to be an Irishman, can seldom be prevailed upon 
to understand. 

It only remains to speak of little Jessica; for 
though she is still ranked as a school-girl at home, 
she has left school nominally, and is therefore en- 
titled to a permanent place in our family picture. 
And yet we are half disposed to leave her out 
altogether ; since she is not exactly in keeping 
with any other part of it. Let us pass her over 
slightly, by saying that she is one of those plants 
which are occasionally found to spring up, as if 
spontaneously, in a soil and under circumstances 



DINING OUT. 97 

altogether uncongenial to them, or at least altoge- 
ther unlikely to have produced them according to 
the common course of things. She reminds one of 
a lily of the valley in the midst of a bed of poppies, 
or a delicate white rose starting from the same 
root with a whole family of flaunting red ones. 
There is a natural refinement about the little Jes- 
sica — both of mind, manner, and person — which 
has in fact no connexion whatever with place or 
circumstances ; and into the causes of which we 
are not in a mood sufficiently philosophical to pe- 
netrate, even if this were a fit occasion. Suffice it 
therefore to add that Jessica, " the gentle Jessica/' 
was born a few days after her mama had been to 
see the Merchant of Venice, and received her name 
from the association of ideas attendant on that 
circumstance. This is the only touch of the ro- 
mantic that can be detected in the history of the 
Tibbs's. 

Be it known that Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs are 
above the affectation of assembling all their friends 
once or twice in a season to a crowded '* At 
Home," and treating them to thin negus, mis- 
cellaneous biscuits, and a seat between six ; — for 
they shrewdly suspect that the said practice is 
no less dictated by the parsimony of the in- 
vitcrs, than they know it to be destructive to the 



98 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

pleasure of the invited. They have no notion that 
any thing is worth having, and therefore worth 
offering, that costs nothing; and as they can 
afford it, they never ask people to sit upon any 
other chairs than their own. It is to one of the 
dinner parties which grew out of this prejudice 
(which, by the by, the most fastidious of their 
friends admit to be an amiable one) that we shall 
now introduce our readers. As, however, we have 
not hitherto had any cause to indulge in a pique 
against the said readers, we shall spare them the 
trouble of forming one of the party as it remains 
assembled in the drawing-room during the half 
hour following that named in the invite: for if 
there be an occasion when the genii of awkward- 
ness and ennui take incarnate forms, and each 
multiplies itself by eight, like Kehama, it is at 
a party of sixteen assembled as aforesaid. We 
will therefore join the Tibbs's party at the foot 
of the stairs, and enter the dining-room with it 
at once. 

In ten minutes (and not less) the company were 
seated to the satisfaction of Mrs. T., — who always 
insists on managing these matters herself, and 
utterly sets her face against that freewill which 
she hears is making such alarming encroachments 
in the realms of fashion : for she is of Lady Mac- 



DINING OUT. 99 

beth's opinion, that " the sauce to meat is cere- 
mony." She thinks too, with the same hostess, 
that 



— the feast is sold 



That is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a making, 
'Tis given with welcome." 



Accordingly, she expresses that welcome occa- 
sionally during her feasts ; to the great scandal of 
her son Thomas, who has imbibed notions which 
she considers of a very heterodox nature in these 
particulars ; and to the infinite horror on this oc- 
casion of Miss Leftoff, the antiquated sister in law 
of a city knight, at whose house in Nottingham 
Place she occasionally dines, and whose fashionable 
friends, she will venture to say, never made any 
body welcome in their lives ! It need scarcely be 
intimated that Miss L. took the precaution of ex- 
pressing this opinion by looks alone. 

Of the cates that displayed themselves on re- 
moving the spacious cushion-shaped covers (for 
the Tibbs's have not yet escaped from the Age of 
Tin in this particular) we shall not give any minute 
account ; merely stating that they maintained a 
well-poised medium between the mere substantials, 
clad au naturel, of the old English school, and the 
" high fantasticals" of the modern French cuisine 



100 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

— that Monmouth-street of meats — where they gel 
dressed out in a hundred different fashions of se- 
cond-hand frippery, in not one of which do their 
best friends know them. 

Dinner now commenced, and taciturnity began 
at the same moment to sound a retreat. For an 
Englishman, if he will talk at no other time, will 
at his dinner. He then sees something before 
him to talk about : which at other times he is 
forced to imagine ; and that is too much trouble : 
—for, whatever his friends or enemies may say to 
the contrary, John Bull is the most poco-curante 
animal in nature, and cares for nothing that does 
not " come home to his business." — But let us 
have no digressions from our dinner, whatever we 
may be obliged to endure at it. 

Mrs. Tibbs had taken the precaution, as in duty 
to her good dinner bound, of arranging the male 
portion of her company with an eye to what her 
covers concealed ; so that when they disappeared, 
each party found himself opposite to the dish best 
adapted to his dissecting talents. For the first 
ten minutes, therefore, after the removal of the 
accustomed soup and fish which never failed to 
form the standing top and bottom of the Tibbs's 
table, nothing was distinguishable but a somewhat 
confused hubbub, consisting of the heads and tails 



DINING OUT. 101 

of phrases as disjointed as the contents of the 
dishes to which they referred — such as " May I 

be permitted " " Will you allow me — " 

" Really I'm quite ashamed - " " Pray give 

me leave " " I'm sorry to trouble you — — " 

" The trouble's a pleasure ■ " &c. &c. &c. By 
the bye, we should not have permitted the afore- 
said soup and fish to have entirely vacated their 
places, without repeating an enormous pun apper- 
taining thereto, which Mr. Tibbs the younger had 
picked up at office that morning, and being a bit 
of a wag, perpetrated on this occasion. And we 
are the more unwilling that it should be defrauded 
of its fame, seeing that the youth had magnanimity 
enough to mulct himself of both soup and fish, in 
order to have an opportunity of atcheiving it. 
Both Mr. and Mrs. T. happened to ask him, nearly 
at the same moment, which he would chuse, soup 
or fish; to which he replied, "with infinite promp- 
titude," that he did not chuse either, for that 
he was not a superficial person. This sally, 
though it greatly scandalized Mr. Tibbs, the elder, 
and fell entirely still-born on the ear of Mrs. T., 
was received by the company in general with great 
eclat ; and moreover it had the important effect of 
deciding the future fate of Mr. Deputy Double- 
chin's youngest son — which had been resting in 



102 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

equilibrio for the last six months, and which was 
now finally fixed for an attorney's office — " it made 
a lad so sharp/' the Deputy said. 

We must now let the dinner take its course till 
the sweets come on; for the remarks of city epi- 
cures on the merits of any given dish are only edi- 
fying when the dish itself happens to be at hand, 
and the hearer can prove the truth of the dogma 
laid down in regard to it. Suffice it that the gen- 
tlemen had all " great pleasure in taking wine" 
with each other, and that each of the ladies bowed 
their heads sundry times across the table, in token 
of their skill in practising the ingenious fiction of 
doing the same without wetting their lips : for 
ladies in the class of those with whom we have at 
present the pleasure of associating, (especially un- 
married ones,) have a notion that they are bound 
to take wine with every body who asks them, and 
are at the same time bound to avoid taking wine at 
all, as studiously as if they were Mussulmans. A 
young lady from the city, who should be detected 
in taking two glasses of wine at dinner, would 
expect her father's clerk to make love to her the 
next day, and would not be very angry if he did. 

Towards the latter end of a dinner-party, if at 
all, an Englishman begins to feel a disposition to 
hear himself talk. Accordingly, then it was that 



DINING OUT. 103 

the topics of the day began to be discussed at the 
table of the Tibbs's. And who, after having been 
present at a party of this kind, shall say that busi- 
ness and politics are the only subjects in which 
Englishmen of the middle classes take an interest, 
and that literature, and the fine arts, do not enjoy 
their due share of consideration ? On the present 
occasion Mrs. Tibbs herself introduced the subject 
of literature even before the cloth was drawn, by 
observing that she understood from her girls Sir 
Walter Scott's last new play of Woodstock was not 
near so clever as two that he wrote some time ago 
called Guy Mannering and Rob Roy ; and which 
latter, as she intimated, some person had expanded 
into a book of several volumes — for she had seen 
it lying on Mrs. Lightblue's library table. " La, 
Ma !" — exclaimed Juliana, somewhat impatiently, 
on hearing Mrs. T. make this unexpected sally 
into the confines of literature — " I'm sure we told 
you no such thing. And how you do confuse 
things together ! — Why Guy Mannering is an 
opera, written by Mr. Bishop ; and it was Mr. 
Terry, the actor, who wrote Rob Roy, and Sir 
Walter himself who afterwards made it into a 
novel." — " Well, my love" — said Mrs. T. — " you 
know I don't pretend to understand so much about 
these things as you do. But what was that" — she 



104 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

continued — for she likes to display her daughter's 
knowledge, even at the expense of her own — 
" what was that you were telling me, about Sir 
Walter Scott being known among his friends by 
the title of the great 'unknown 1 What do they 
mean by calling him the Great Unknown ? I 
thought he was better known than body, except 
' the author of Waverly,' and the court of Alder- 
men." — "Dear me, Ma!" — said Frances — " why 
you're at your confusions again — ' the author of 
Waverly' died long before we were born. Why 
Waverly was written ' sixty years ago,' It says 
so in the title-page." 

Luckily the noise of knives and forks, and the 
clearing of the table, prevented this enlightened 
colloquy from extending beyond the immediate 
precincts in which it was uttered, and where the 
subjects of it were not sufficiently interesting to 
render its little errors of any importance ; and by 
the time the desert and wine were placed on the 
table,' all thoughts of it had passed away, and 
given place to a discussion which now arose, rela- 
tive to the progress of the fine arts in this country ; 
in which discussion all the party seemed fully 
qualified and prepared to take their share. The 
point in question was, the- comparative merits of 
that year's Exhibition at Somerset House, (then 



DINING OUT. 105 

open,) and the previous year's; — the point having 
been started in consequence of some remark on 
the merits of a whole length likeness of Mr. 
Tibbs the elder, which had been recognised that 
very morning by two of the party, notwithstanding 
its modest alias of " portrait of a gentleman." On 
this question, as to the aforesaid progress of the 
fine arts generally, it is singular that every one of 
the party had fully made up their minds. It is no 
less singular too, that the judgments were pretty 
equally divided ; about one half being decidedly 
of opinion that the Exhibition this year was 
" much better" than that of last year, and the 
other half feeling equally satisfied that it was 
" not near so good :" both parties agreeing, how- 
ever, that there were " a great many portraits ;" 
and that the rooms were " exceedingly warm," and 
the company " very mixed !" 

By this time the wine had passed round two or 
three times ; and as this proceeded in its regular 
course (out of which Mr. T. never permits it to 
swerve on any consideration whatever) most of the 
various topics of the day came by turn into dis- 
cussion ; and we may venture to say that not one 
of them was treated with a less conspicuous share 
of acumen and discrimination than had been dis- 
played in regard to the above. What was said on 



106 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

any of these subjects it would be obviously improper 
for us to report at any length, however edifying- 
such a report might be. Suffice it to add, that, 
after the fifth glass of wine, politics, as it always 
does on similar occasions, became the sole order of 
the day. Whereupon the ladies, accepting this as a 
very intelligible signal that their company could 
be dispensed with, retired to the drawing-room ; 
and each gentleman proceeded to take advantage of 
the first opportunity that offered, of expressing his 
own particular opinions on the prominent political 
events and topics of the past week ; each availing 
himself, respectively, of the particular newspaper 
to which he was attached, and each of course 
being " decidedly of opinion" with that. As po- 
litics is a subject not to be ousted when once it 
gets a fair footing at an English after-dinner table, 
and as it is one with which we do not profess to 
meddle, we shall now silently take our leave : 
though we were perhaps bound to consider the 
Dinner Party of the day as virtually at an end, 
the moment the ladies left the table. 

H. 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 



BY PROFESSOR W- 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. * 

No. 2. 

ROMEO AND JULIET. 

BY PROFESSOR W . 



MY DEAR FRIEND, 



After a long protracted silence, I again venture 
to address you, on the subject of that divine 
mind whose productions have so often occupied 
and delighted our minds— not without occasion- 
ally overshadowing, and even overwhelming them, 
with a sense of its wondrous and superhuman 
power. And in truth, I am fain to confess my 
belief, that it is the perhaps half-unconscious 
presence of this sense, perpetually pressing upon 
me whenever I have turned my thoughts to this 
subject, which has so long deterred me from 
fulfilling my promise, of communicating to you, 

* Continued from Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 2. p. 512. 

I 



114 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

in something like a regular and tangible form, 
those views and feelings which we have so often 
discussed together, touching the true individual 
characters of Shakespeare's principal dramatic 
works. 

It is not that I have feared to approach the 
footstool of this mighty being — this god among 
men ; or that I have felt abashed in his ima- 
ginary presence: for he too has said, in senti- 
ment if not in words, " Let little children come 
unto me, and I will not turn them away." (To 
you, who know my heart, I need not disclaim, 
in this allusion, anything approaching to levity, 
or a disposition towards the undue mingling of 
sacred things with profane.) It is not, I say, 
that in entering the presence of this great repre- 
sentative of all the various powers of the divinely 
human intellect of man, I have experienced a 
more than ordinary sense of my own comparative 
nothingness, and have shrunk backward abashed at 
the contemplation : for it is one of the finest and 
most characteristical qualities of Shakespeare's 
mind, that, on feeling ourselves within the sphere 
of its action and influence, all egotism, whether 
it be of a vain-glorious and self-exalting, or of 
an equally vain-glorious though self-abasing na- 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 115 

ture, melts utterly away, and becomes merged and 
lost in an all absorbing sentiment of mingled ad- 
miration and love ; an admiration, however, and 
a love, which have for their object nothing more, 
after all, than human attributes and qualities ; 
and which therefore inspire us with anything 
rather than contempt for the form that we wear, 
and the mind that gives it life and motion. It 
is, in fact, only a man that we are listening to ; 
and being men ourselves, we cannot chuse but 
listen with something like secret self-congratu- 
lations, on the possible greatness and beauty and 
power of our common nature. 

No — if I am ever disposed to sink into an un- 
due despondency of heart, and to let my coward 
thoughts fly before the conquering spirit of 
doubt that will sometimes beset them, I have 
only to make my stand within the stronghold of 
Shakespeare, and I feel instantly revived and re- 
instated and re-assured ; and the very spot that 
I had entered the moment before, cowering and 
crest-fallen, I am ready the next moment to 
quit, erect, stedfast, and heart-whole. No — of 
all those master-spirits upon whom we call, and 
bid them " minister to a mind diseased," he is 
the only one who does not, in the end, refer 

1 2 



116 



REJECTED ARTICLES. 



the patient back to himself ; — he and he alone is 
able to 

" Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Rase out the written troubles of the brain, 
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, 
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff 
Which weighs upon the heart." 

In short, it is he alone who can make us feel — - 
what we never should have felt without him — 
the full value and virtue of our own hearts, and 
minds, and affections, and passions, and powers 
— in a word, of our own mighty and mysterious 
nature. 

If I remember rightly, I remarked to you in 
my first letter, that all the great works of Shake- 
speare have within them that oneness, that unity 
of purpose, which is demanded by Aristotle as 
an essential quality of the highest species of 
drama: though, assuredly, I did not pretend to 
state that the quality I speak of is atchieved in 
the manner directed by Aristotle; namely, by 
making every part of the action grow out of that 
part immediately preceding it, and thus ren- 
dering each part at once a cause and an effect. 

No — this was not Shakespeare's way, because 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 117 

it was not Nature's. It might easily be demon- 
strated, that in every separate portion of actual 
life which includes a sufficient degree of passion 
to make it susceptible of a dramatic representa- 
tion, there is, in effect, a perfect unity of charac- 
ter. But no one will pretend that that unity is 
produced, even once out of a hundred times, by 
the mere mechanical course and concatenation of 
the events which occupy the period in question. 
On the contrary, anything like such a mechani- 
cal linking together, and dependence upon, one 
event and another, would go nigh to destroy 
that real unity of the imagination, which is what 
Shakespeare aims at and atchieves. 

To make what I mean more clear, let us turn 
at once to the drama which I have chosen for 
the immediate subject of my present letter, and 
which, if I mistake not, is even more deeply 
imbued with this dramatic unity of imagina- 
tion than any other of its wondrous author's 
productions. 

The unity which belongs to the play of Romeo 
and Juliet, consists in that spirit of youth which 
everywhere penetrates and pervades it— even from 
the flow of its language and the music of its 
rhythm, to the very depths and innermost recesses 



118 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

of that passion which is its nominal subject : I 
say its "nominal" subject; for, paradoxical as 
the assertion may at first seem, love is not the real 
subject of this tragedy, but only the accidental, 
or rather the incidental one- — incidental to it, sim- 
ply because it is, in an incomparably greater degree 
than all other passions, incidental to that state 
of being which is the essential subject of the 
work. 

If Shakespeare had proposed to himself to 
illustrate and make manifest the various move- 
ments and qualities appertaining to and consti- 
tuting the passion of love, would he have made 
it the first action of his lover to rise from the 
feet of one mistress, and, without a moment's 
pause, throw himself before another ; forgetting 
from that time forth that the first had ever 
existed, much less held him in thrall? Is this 
the character of love ? No : — but it is the cha- 
racter of youth, and therefore Shakespeare has 
made his youthful man exhibit it : for Romeo is 
not a lover, nor any other individual modifica- 
cation of the human character ; he has, in fact, 
no individual and determinate character at all, 
but is a general specimen of man — a pure ab- 
straction of our human nature — at that particular 



LETTERS ON SH AKESPEARE. 119 

period of its being which occurs exactly between 
boyhood and maturity, and which we call, by way 
of distinction, the period of Youth. 

Is it a characteristic of love — I mean of that 
profound mental passion of which I am now 
speaking — to start into life in an instant, at the 
mere lightning glance of beauty, and to reach 
its full and perfect maturity even in the very- 
hour of its birth ? Oh, no ! — but it is the cha- 
racteristic of that other love, which constitutes 
so great and absorbing a portion of the " beings 
end and aim" of Youth. 

I am confident, my dear friend, that you will 
not mistake me, in what I am now saying. You 
will not suspect me of wishing — nay, of daring 
— to breathe the slightest suspicion of impurity 
over the enchanting passion and persons of the 
lovers in this drama, or to throw a doubt upon 
the right of that passion to be called love. It 
was a love " pure as the thought of purity " — ■ 
pure as is that purely intellectual love of which 
I have just spoken, and which cannot co-exist 
with impurity. It was as pure as that ; but it 
was not that. 

It is not my purpose to institute a comparative 
estimate of these two different kinds of love, but 
only to mark the distinction which exists be- 



120 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

tween them. And in order to this, let me say- 
that they differ, as everything must differ, the 
sources of which are not the same. They differ, 
as the earth differs from the heavens — or rather 
as their productions differ ; for one of these pas- 
sions is the production of the heavenly within us, 
and the other of the earthly. But the latter is 
equally pure with the former, when it exists in 
the state in which they possessed it whose history 
we are examining ; and it differs from its relative 
only as the flowers differ from the stars, or as phy- 
sical beauty differs from intellectual. Is the rose 
impure because its roots are in the earth, and its 
nourishment springs from thence? Neither then 
is the love of Romeo and Juliet impure because its 
roots and its food are in the flesh, not in the 
spirit. 

But let us look a little more closely into the 
characteristic qualities of this most enchanting 
of all dramas — most enchanting to all of us, be- 
cause it offers, to those who are still the happy 
denizens of that state of being which it represents, 
an echo of the rich music that is for ever ring- 
ing in their hearts ; and to those who have passed 
through that state, it recalls and revives and re- 
creates all that sanctified and made it sweet. 

xA.t the opening of the play, we find the hero of 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 121 

it as deeply in love (as the phrase is) as words, 
even the words of Shakespeare, can describe him 
to be. He is altogether a creature of passion ; 
floating this way and that on the waves of it ; 
blown hither and thither by its winds ; now borne 
downwards into its darkest depths, and now rapt 
upward to it highest and brightest heavens ; one 
moment revelling in its richest fields of hope and 
happiness, and the next bound hand and foot in 
the dungeons of its despair. 

Let it be observed, too, that we hear of all this 
passion, long before we hear of its object ; and 
the reader who comes to the perusal of Romeo and 
Juliet for the first time, imagines, of course, that 
it is Juliet who inspires it all ; or rather, he does not 
tax his imagination on the subject, or ever think 
of inquiring, but takes it for granted. And I am 
inclined to fear, too, that when he first comes to 
discover that all these transports are felt for an- 
other, and not for Juliet, he is at least disappoint- 
ed, if not displeased or indignant. 

And yet the above is, beyond comparison, that 
point in the character which shows its creator in 
the most extraordinary light— which most clearly 
evinces the subtlety of his conceptions, and his 
astonishing boldness in developing them. No 
poet that ever lived, except Shakespeare, would 



122 K EJECTED ARTICLES. 

have thought of proving the depth and sincerity 
of his hero's love for his present mistress, by re- 
presenting him as feeling and expressing it for the 
first time, in the very presence of her who was his 
mistress half an hour ago, and for whom he would 
then have professed and acted all that he now will 
for his new one. And yet, instead of feeling that 
Romeo's late professions of love for Rosaline throw 
any suspicion upon the sincerity of his present 
love for Juliet, there can be no doubt whatever 
that the effect is exactly the reverse. I say the 
effect ; for I believe that those (even among female 
readers) who make it a question with themselves 
whether this fickleness, as they would call it, does 
or does not affect the value of Romeo's later 
passion, are at first inclined to determine, that at 
any rate Rosaline had his first love. But let a 
Romeo of real life transfer his transports from an- 
other to them ; and at the same time, let another 
adorer of equal pretensions, lay at their feet the 
premices of his heart ; and see whether they will 
not incline to the first rather than the second. 
And this, not from any feeling of gratified vanity 
at the preference, but from an instinctive sense of 
the spontaneous nature of the love of youth, and 
its consequent incapacity of waiting for a particu 
lar object before it becomes developed. Every 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 123 

woman believes, and is bound to believe, that she 
is the only object that could have^e^ her lover,. 
But she does not think him the less fixed because 
his love was lent to another before it was given to 
her; nor does she covet it the less because she 
cannot look upon herself as its creator. It is for 
man, not woman, to cherish a feeling so nearly 
allied to selfishness. 

But another effect of representing Romeo as ex- 
perienced in the ways of love, long before he meets 
with the true object of it, is, to aggrandise our 
sense of the power and weight of his passion, 
when it comes to be transferred to its ultimate 
destination. It was absolutely necessary to the 
conduct of the story, that we should see the 
commencement of the love of Romeo for Juliet. 
And it was equally necessary that we should 
attach a certain value and importance to that 
love. But we have no great faith in either 
the force or the stability of a passion which is 
conceived and born before our eyes. Accordingly, 
Romeo is placed before us, the very concentration 
or personification of passion. " Passion !" Mer- 
cutio calls him ; as if it were his name. He is all 
made up of it. And when he sees what we all 
along feel to be the legitimate object of that 
passion, he has nothing to do but pour it all out 



124 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

into her heart, and disbui then himself of what has 
hitherto been pressing upon him with a weight 
" heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ;" but 
heavy and oppressive only because it could not 
find the object that was destined to receive and 
share it : as the clouds go heavily and darkly 
along, while they are surcharged with the bright 
rain, but become bright and bouyant themselves 
the moment they come near enough to the earth 
to part with their fertilizing burthen. 

If Romeo's love had been the love of a moment, 
we should never have endured the train of conse- 
quences that flow from it, but should have regard- 
ed them in the anomalous light of effects without 
an adequate cause. But as it is, that weight of 
passion (the accumulation of years perhaps) which 
he pours forth at once into the heart of Juliet the 
moment he beholds her, is cause enough for any 
effect that can flow from it. 

I will not scruple to confess, that the good effect 
which is produced by Romeo presenting himself 
before Juliet with a heart already filled to over- 
flowing with passion, is not gained without some 
counterbalancing evil. And if Rosaline, the first 
object of that passion, had been brought forward 
in the play, in a visible form, this evil would have 
been still more manifest. But, to say nothing of 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 125 

her not returning his passion, she is but a name 
in our imagination, after all— not a person. And, 
to shew how entirely Shakespeare has gained 
his object in making Rosaline only a name, it is 
but necessary to appeal to every ordinary reader 
and spectator of the play, who, on referring to 
their feelings on the point in question, will 
find that they scarcely remember that such a per- 
son is alluded to. 

If, indeed, Rosaline had been represented to us 
as the accepting and accepted mistress of Romeo, 
and his change of allegiance had come upon us 
in the light of a desertion, the case would have 
been widely different, and its effect on the whole 
after part of the drama would have been mischie- 
vous, and indeed intolerable. 

But why, you ask, contemplate a case which 
was never contemplated by Shakespeare ? I ac- 
cept the reproof, and at once return to him and 
his divine work; — for I shall have quite enough to 
do to explain to you my views of what this play is, 
without speculating on what it might have been. 

The love of Romeo and Juliet must be re- 
garded, then, as the manifestation of that passion 
(call it by what name you will) which is the 
dominating spirit of that period of human life of 
which these lovers are the type and representa- 



126 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

tive ; — a period when to live and to love are one, 
and the life of which and its love expire together ; 
as we see mystically shadowed forth in the deaths 
of these two beings. It has every characteristic 
of that period : its headlong precipitancy ; its 
heedless rashness ; its total disregard of all 
worldly considerations or consequences ; its en- 
thusiastic ardour of aspiration, and force of will ; 
its unhesitating confidence in the reality of all 
which does but seem, whether of good or of 
evil ; its pronesss to seize, without an instant's 
delay, on all that the hand of pleasure proffers, 
without asking the price, or calculating the com- 
parative value ; and above all, that boundless ca- 
pacity for enjoyment and for suffering, which one 
moment lifts it to the highest empyrean of bliss, 
and the next sinks it to the lowest dungeons of 
despair. 

So true does it seem to me that Romeo and 
Juliet are mere abstractions, or rather that the 
two are an abstraction of human life at a par- 
ticular period of it ; or, perhaps it were better to 
say, of the human being in its dual state, of 
man and woman; that if we examine our feel- 
ings in regard to their characters, (as we are ac- 
customed to phrase it,) we shall find that we do 
not recognize anything in the shape of indivi- 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 127 

duality, or of intellectual portraiture, in either of 
them : which I will venture to say is not the case 
with any one other of the creations of Shakes- 
peare's hand. 

Neither do we connect with the lovers any ima- 
ginary association whatever, appertaining to ex- 
ternal form : which truth, if it be one, is equally 
with the above confined to them alone. 

If we were to descend from this general state^ 
ment of the proposition, and examine every se- 
parate sentiment or sentence uttered by each of 
them throughout the play, it would probably lead 
to the same conclusion. And the reason is, that 
they utter, not the results of that complicated 
condition of being which we call character, and 
which consists of a thousand modifying influences 
and impulses ; but of passion — passion, which is 
one and indivisible, and which is the same yes- 
terday, to-day, and for ever; — passion, which 
circumstances may repress, or keep out of sight, 
or even destroy ; but which nothing can change; 
which is in fact not susceptible of change, in the 
very nature of things ; because it is in our pas- 
sions that our human being consists ; and while 
that remains, they must remain too; and while 
they remain, their result must be universally and 
unchangeably the same. 



128 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Such, my dear friend, are the conceptions which 
I have formed of the two principal persons of this 
divinely human work. Let me not quit them, 
however, without following them to their fragrant 
grave, and seeing them quietly inurned there : for, 
untimely as that grave is, it is still sweet, since 
each finds it in the arms of the other, and ex- 
hales over it the sweetest sighs that were ever 
breathed from the lips of loveliness. 

Let me approach it, too, without a thought of 
sorrow, nor shed over it one profaning tear ; 
for they whom it encloses shed none, but laid 
themselves down in it as if it had been their 
bridal bed : which in truth it was ; for they had 
no other. 

No — let us utter no idle lamentations over the 
early death of these lovers, either on their ac- 
count, or our own ; for had they lived they would 
have ceased to be lovers, both for us and for 
themselves. If the flowers were not to die almost 
in the hour of their birth, they would be born in 
vain ; and if the state of being which these lovers 
typify were not as fleeting as it is fair, its fairness 
would be forgotten or disregarded long before it 
was passed away. 

Doubtless Shakespeare intended that this should 
be the condition of our feelings in regard to the 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 129 

deaths of Romeo and Juliet ; for he has inflicted 
no positive pain upon them, either physical or 
intellectual ; no " longing, lingering looks" are 
cast behind them as they pass away from our 
sight ; but all is anticipation and hope ; each being 
dead to the other, and each therefore hastening to 
join its other self. It is to each as if its soul 
had passed away beforehand, and there was no- 
thing left for the deserted body to do, but melt 
meekly into the bosom of its parent earth, and 
mingle with the elements from whence it arose. 

The catastrophe of Romeo and Juliet is ex- 
pressly contrived with a view to this avoidance of 
all painful impressions at our parting with this 
pair of " star-crossed lovers ;" and no other ar- 
rangement but that which has been adopted could 
have accomplished this view. As for Juliet, — 
e * the weaker vessel" — she is put gently to sleep 
the moment that adverse circumstances are at 
hand ; and she only awakes to see her lord lying 
at her feet, and to ponr forth her soul into his still 
warm bosom. While he, having been struck 
dead at once, in spirit, by the account of her 
death, has nothing to do, and never for an instant 
even thinks of doing anything, but seek himself 
out " a triumphant grave," and pass into it, 
drinking an almost jocund health to his love : for 



130 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

that he feels to be immortal, even at the very mo- 
ment when its object lies dead before his eyes. 

Let it be observed, too, that none of the 
ordinary concomitants of death are admitted 
into this closing scene of the lives of our lovers. 
As for Juliet, — her beauty is upon her, bright as 
ever. And though, from the supposed truth of 
his information as to her death, Romeo believes 
her to be dead, yet he evidently feels that she is 
not dead, and dies himself in the half- voluptuous 
kiss that recals her to life. 

" Here's to- my love!" * * * * 
*.».*•« Thus with a kiss I die !" 

While she, so recalled to life, does but ask for 
her husband ; and at once finding him, and find- 
ing him not, replies to his kiss by another, (the 
Jirst and the last of each) and so dies too, with 
the " warm" pressure of his lips upon hers. 

" Thy lips are warm !" 

What is there of death here ? what of the 
grave ? It is but the spirit of youth, exhaling 
itself away in sweet sighs, to the music of meet- 
ing lips. And if you would not think me too 
fanciful, I would add,. — with reference to what I 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 131 

have before hinted, as to the nature of Romeo and 
Juliet's love, — that this scene is, perchance, merely 
intended to be typical of the natural and necessary 
death of that particular species of love which 
cannot survive fruition even for a moment, at 
least under its original form and character; but, 
when it does survive it, assumes a new form, and 
rises into that intellectual love which is immortal 
as the soul that is its seat. Each of the lovers 
seeks death — each dies willingly, and without a 
reverting look — and e.ach expires instantly on 
pressing its lips to those of the other. And we 
may, if we please, fancy that each presently arises 
from its " triumphant grave, " in another and a 
better world ; assoiled from all its earthly weak- 
nesses and woes, and living, and to live for ever. 

Perhaps I ought to apologize, even to you, for 
dwelling so long on this particular point in the 
drama, and still more for dwelling on it in terms 
which I fear you will at least not admire for their 
sobriety. But the truth is, I never can keep 
my feelings, in regard to this part of the drama, 
(and therefore not my expressions), within very 
strict bounds, when I think upon the base and 
senseless profanation which has been practised on 
it by some ignorant modern hand, and universally 
adopted by the still more ignorant players in their 

k 2 



132 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

representation of it. The catastrophe was not 
tragic enough, forsooth ; and they must have the 
lovers meet face to face, and die in each others 
arms by lingering torments : the one torn to 
pieces in body by the physical effects of the poi- 
son, and in mind by the still more terrible poison 
of rage and despair at seeing his lady living after 
he has killed himself to be with her ; and the 
other, racked and riven still more fearfully at the 
sight of all these horrors, — till she has scarcely 
strength left in her tender body and exhausted 
mind, to let out that life which it would be mad- 
ness to keep a moment longer, after witnessing the 
scene which they make her witness ! 

But let us not be too angry with those who 
knew not what they did, and whose crime in- 
cluded its own punishment. We need not wish 
them worse than to want that which, having, they 
could not have perpetrated the profanation of 
which I speak. Though it is scarcely just to 
indulge towards them any feeling approaching to 
pity and forgiveness, when we recollect how many 
thousands of their betters they have deprived of 
that delight which they will now never experience, 
of witnessing the true and natural catastrophe of 
this drama, and of enjoying it as their natural 
sense of the true and beautiful would have led 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 133 

them to do : for there can be little doubt that, 
even in this age of readers, scarcely one person 
in a thousand knows any thing of Shakespeare, but 
what they have seen on the stage. 

Let us now return to a more general consider- 
ation of this divine drama. It is not in the two 
principal persons alone that that spirit of youth 
prevails, which I have spoken of as the predomi- 
nating character of the work. All are alike em- 
bued with it ; it renders all buoyant and full of 
life ; it is an abiding presence which pervades 
and interpenetrates all, and in so doing creates 
that dramatic unity of effect which is so indis- 
pensable to the highest species of drama, and 
which is so rarely to be met with out of Shakes- 
peare. 

A glance at the principal secondary characters 
will make manifest the truth of what I am 
stating. What is old Capulet, but a grey-headed 
youth ? Age has had its inevitable effect upon 
his body, it is true ; for physical things cannot 
resist it. But his mind has escaped its power, and 
is as young as when he was a hair-brained school- 
boy. He is as eager and hot-hearted in the pur- 
suit of an imaginary quarrel, as he was then ; 
as delighted at the anticipation of a feast and 
revelry, and as animated and light-hearted when 



134 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

it arrives ; as precipitate in making up his mind 
on points of vital importance, and as headstrong 
in maintaining his hasty determinations; as free 
and generous in his expenditure ; as happy at the 
sight of others happiness ; — in short, he has no 
one quality of age, but that one which half-trans- 
lates age into youth, by recalling and recreating 
all that it then felt, and thought, and acted : I 
mean its gay-hearted garrulousness. An old man 
who is perpetually talking over the exploits of his 
youth, and finds no lack of listeners, is happier 
than when he was acting them ; and, in effect, 
he is younger; for he has already reached that 
period the anticipation of which is the only curse 
of youth : he is young, without the fear before 
him of growing old. 

The rest of the old people are scarcely less hap- 
pily gifted than Capulet. Even Friar Lawrence 
is no exception. However he may deceive him- 
self and others by having wise proverbs on his lips, 
his heart is as young as a romantic school-girl's ; 
and he does not hesitate for a single instant (any 
more than she would) to assist his young friend 
and pupil in committing an insane marriage with 
the daughter of his direst foe. 

" Wisely and slow ; they stumble that run fast;" 
he says. And then he goes immediately and marries 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 135 

a couple, whose acquaintance is the growth of 
half an hour ! 

He is a poet, too. Not a word he utters but 
what is steeped in the rich music of the imagi- 
nation. And poets are ever young. Hark, how 
lie greets the first approach of the lady Juliet to 
his lonely cell. It is the very spirit of youth and 
of poetry combined, that speaks : 

" Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot 
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flints. 
A lover may bestride the gossamers 
That idle in the wanton summer air, 
And yet not fall : so light is vanity !" 

And as for the delightful old Nurse— she is the 
youngest of all the party. Her tongue seems to 
have the power as well as the privilege of child- 
hood ; and whether it has anything or nothing to 
say, runs babbling on like a summer brook. 

But if the old people are all young, what shall 
we say of the young ones ? of Mercutio, Tybalt, 
County Paris, and the rest ? — What— but that they 
are all more or less embued with the pre vai ling- 
spirit of the drama ; and that in none of them is 
that spirit blended with any other;— and that the 
first named— -Mercutio— is the very quintessential 
extract — the spirit of that spirit. He is as young 



136 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

as the rest of his companions, without like them 
having yet tasted of that bitter-sweet fruit of 
youth which is the first step towards age. He is 
like them in all other respects ; but with this (to 
him at least) manifest advantage over them — that 
he can jest all day long at that which is the only 
serious thing in the world to them. And even 
when death comes upon him in the midst of his 
mad-brained joy, he will not yield to the sum- 
mons, but struggles jestingly against it ; as if it 
were nothing more than an impertinent creditor 
arresting him on his way to a feast. 

There is still one other person of this drama, 
whom you must not suppose that I have forgotten ; 
still less must you imagine that I would inten- 
tionally overlook him, from any feeling that his 
introduction militates against that unity of effect 
which, I have said, is so finely spread over the 
whole design, and wrought into the whole texture, 
of this perfect work. I mean the Apothecary. 
So far from wishing to do so, I conceive that he is 
no less essential to the due bringing-out of the 
effect (to use a painter's phrase), than any one other 
person in the drama. And this alone is a suffi- 
cient reason for finding him here. 

But even putting aside this view of the matter, — 
if it were not for him, the impression received 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 137 

from the whole work would be too buoyant, and 
full of the spirit of youth, to be a true echo of 
any impression which we can receive from the 
contemplation of any actual portion of our human 
life : which imitative impression is what every 
one of Shakespeare's dramas is intended to create, 
and in fact does create. 

The two extremes of our existence— Life and 
Death — like all other extremes, meet. They are 
necessary corollaries from each other ; and we can 
no more contemplate one absent from the other, 
than we can the two extremes of a continuous 
line. Now, the idea of the Apothecary perpetually 
haunts our imagination when we are thinking 
of the play of Romeo and Juliet, just as the idea 
of Death haunts it when we are thinking even of 
the brightest and freshest portions of our Human 
Life. And the idea just as little disturbs the 
general impressions we receive in either case. It 
does not disturb, but only modifies them, by 
blending them with others, which, in taking 
away a little of their brightness, add to rather 
than diminish their moral beauty. The idea, in 
both cases, serves but as a gentle memento mori, — 
endearing the objects and images with which it 
blends ; even as I have seen it do in the burial- 
places of a foreign, land, when engraven on a 



138 



REJECTED ARTICLES. 



little cross of black wood, planted on an infant's 
grave, and almost hidden among the bright flowers 
that garland and grow around it. 

Permit me, my dear friend, before closing this 
inordinately long letter, to warn you (though I feel 
assured that the warning is superfluous) against 
judging of what I have now said of this sweetest, 
gentlest, and most perfect of all Shakespeare's 
productions, in the presence of any of those im- 
pressions which you may have received from 
witnessing the acted play. And this warning is 
particularly necessary (if at all) in connection with 
the latter part of my remarks. I have there sup- 
posed that this drama requires some one idea or 
image, to balance m that exuberant spirit of life 
which everywhere pervades it; and that, there- 
fore, Shakespeare has introduced the one alluded 
to. Need I add, then, that I speak of Shake- 
speare's drama, not of that which has been polluted 
by the impudent interpolations of the players? 
Heaven knows, the general impression left by the 
catastrophe of this latter, when represented, as we 
have seen it, by consummate actors, is enough to 
embitter a whole after life, and half blight the re- 
collections of the past, however bright they may 
have been ! Assuredly, that is enough to coun- 
terbalance a thousand fold all the buoyancy that 



LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 139 

has gone before it, even though the " overwhelm- 
ing brows," and haggard, and famine stricken 
visage of the poor Apothecary, were to be trans- 
formed, by the same kind of play-house magic, 
into the sparkling eyes and rubicund cheeks of 
some fat and contented friar: which transforma- 
tion, by the bye, would be quite as natural and 
necessary to the consistency of the work. 

No— never did I see an essential change made 
in any of Shakespeare's dramas, that was not in- 
finitely for the worse ; and this is infinitely the 
worst of all. So that you will not wonder if I 
am a little anxious that you should not inadver- 
tently try anything I have said of Romeo and 
Juliet, by the impressions received from this ver- 
sion of it — which absolutely destroys the very 
essence of its character, and changes it, so far as 
regards the catastrophe, from a perfect drama of 
the very highest class, into a paltry me/o-drama, of 
the very lowest. 

It was my intention to have said something on 
the poetry of this divine production, both as dis- 
tinguished from, and as blended with, its passion ; 
and also of the exquisite language in which both 
are conveyed. But I must reserve these remarks 
for another letter. Your affectionate friend, 

T. C. 



GRIMM'S GHOST. 

THE CULPEPPERS ON THE CONTINENT. 

BY THE OTHER OF THE AUTHORS OF " REJECTED ADDRESSES.' 



GRIMMS GHOST.* 

THE CULPEPPERS ON THE CONTINENT. 

BY THE OTHER OF THE AUTHORS OF " REJECTED ADDRESSES.' 



The Culpeppers and the Dixons have made nu- 
merous and noticeable advances in the ways of 
haut ton, since I last had occasion to report pro- 
gress on their proceedings. It is true they still 
" hang out," (as Ned Culpepper in his less re- 
fined moments phrases it), in Savage Gardens, 
: — seeing that the leases of their respective resi- 
dences have yet some years to run, and neither 
party has hitherto hit upon any effectual method 
of quickening the pace of those parchment 
ponies. But in default of being able to remove 
their domiciles to the desiderated purlieus of the 
Regent's Park, they have done what they justly 
deem the next best thing, in transferring, as 
much as may be, the air of the said Park to 

* See New Monthly Magazine passim. 



144 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Savage Gardens. Not being at present in a con- 
dition to go to the mountain, they have con- 
trived to make the mountain come to them. In 
short, by the aid of Mr. Parker's patent cos- 
metic for the cure of cracks in the complexions 
of decaying walls, (which, by the bye, like all 
other cosmetics, requires to be " laid on with a 
trowel'*), they have struck off a century from 
the seeming age of their now " modern antique" 
dwellings, and made them as pretty illustrations 
as need be of " the Deformed Transformed.'' 

Both parties, too, were determined " not to 
stick at trifles," as Ned reports, " but do the 
thing handsome while they were about it." And 
accordingly, this memorable change has been 
effected no less intas than in cute; and now, 
Captain Augustus Thackery would no more re- 
cognise the dark, dingy drawing-room, with its 
grey wainscotted walls, in which I have recorded 
his first hospitable reception by the Culpeppers, 
than he did his own face in the glass the other day, 
after having permitted it to be so pitilessly mulct 
of the major part of its mustachios. 

The said drawing-room has been forced, by 
the friendly intervention of a pair of folding- 
doors, into a fashionable alliance with its late 
neighbour the back bed-room adjoining, and the 



gbtmm's ghost. 145 

latter has of course assumed the name and arms 
of the former ; while the windows of each have 
been duly cut down to the floor and raised up to 
the ceiling, according to the newest mode in that 
case made and provided for letting in the cold; 
and the antique mouldings of the wainscot have 
been macadamized into a smooth plain of French 
tapisserie, on which the whole heathen mythology 
are manifesting themselves under the most amiable 
attitudes. 

The furniture has also undergone a no less 
radical reform. The grim old Kidderminster is 
discarded in favour of a brilliant Brussels of a 
kaleidoscope pattern. The eight huge, stiff-legged 
and high-shouldered arm-chairs, each as big as a 
sofa-bedstead, have been changed for a dozen of 
trim little rose- wood receptacles, with legs as 
crooked as ram's horns, and backs that laugh 
lolling to scorn ; besides a tastily-turned Grecian 
couch to match, — constructed (for the con- 
venience of modern Routers) on the express prin- 
ciple of preventing people from going to sleep : 
— to say nothing of a settee in each window, the 
like of which, as Old Culpepper facetiously ob- 
serves, was never seen in the Cittee before. 

As for the rest of the furniture, it has under- 
gone an entire " French Revolution." There is 



146 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

a French Console in the pier; (" Consols are 
deuced high!" said old C. when he saw the 
bill of it) ; a French clock and French china on 
the mantle-piece ; a French glass over the fire- 
place ; French lamps on the French-fashioned 
card-tables ; and French polish on everything in 
the room, except its inhabitants. 

Perhaps it was an amiably unconscious con- 
sciousness of this last-named deficiency, which 
prompted the similar and simultaneous proposal 
of Mrs. Culpepper and Mrs. Dixon to their re- 
spective, respected, and respectable spouses, the 
results of which I am now to report : premising, 
however, that, whatever the censorious may in- 
sinuate to the contrary, the almost identical 
periods and idioms at and in which these two pro- 
posals were promulgated, do not by any means 
demonstrate a previous concert on the part of 
these prudent consorts, touching the point in 
question. Not that I take upon me to deny, any 
more than to asseverate, said concert between said 
consorts. I leave the point to be settled between the 
future commentators on these immortal epistles. 

the family quartett sat looking at each other 
just after dinner, opposite the four points of the 



grimm's ghost. 147 

flowery compass impressed in centre of the 
newly calendered blue baize cover of the cushion- 
shaped dining-table — " Railly, ? p 1 n [ I 

think the young people ought to see some'at of 
foreign parts now. Not but what Margate is 
monstrous genteel, and frequented by the rail tip- 
toppers of Trinity Square and the Crescent — 
especially since the steamers have run so re- 
gular and cheap. But then, you know, one 
does'nt see any of the continent at Margate — 
and I'm sure it must be a fine sight, from what 
Captain Thackery said about it the other day — 
though I cou'dn't very well make out what it was 
like. I'm told, too, it's to be seen just as well 
at Bullen as if you went all the way to Jamaica 
to look at it. Now what do you say, my love, to 
taking us all over for a week or ten days ? I've 
heard it's only like crossing over the way, in a 
manner speaking. Now I think of it, too, I 
shou'dn't wonder a bit if our next door neighbours 
would like to jine us — and that would make it 
come quite easy, you know — for then we could 
all be together, and have our meals under one. 
Besides, — I railly do think the young folks ought 
to see some'at of foreign ways. Why there's 

l 2 



148 R EJECTED ARTICLES. 

them Hincks's gals have been to Rome, and Italy, 
and the Rhine, and" — 

The elder Culpepper's patience, which was 
generally quite exemplary under the infliction of 
an apparently interminable harangue of this 
nature, would probably have stood him in stead 
some time longer. But his love of a joke (pro- 
vided he himself was the ostensible projector of 
it) was not so easily to be kept under ; and ac- 
cordingly, this mention of the Rhine roused him 
from his chin-on-elbow-supported attitude, in a 
moment. 

"The Rind!" reiterated he with a good- 
humoured chuckle — " ha ! ha ! the Rind ! they 
need'nt go far to see that. They've only to step 
into our friend Dixon's shop in Fenchurch Street, 
and they may see plenty of the Rind, and smell 
it too, for that matter." # 

There are certain kinds of puns the mere 
odour of which, like that of " the morning air" 
to the ghost of Hamlet's father, is potent enough 
to drive a disembodied spirit like myself out of 
the room in which they are engendered. And 

* I hope I need not recall to the reader's recollection 
that Mr. Andrew Dixon is the senior partner in an emi- 
nent cheesemongering concern in Fenchurch-street. 



grimm's ghost. 149 

this of Old Culpepper's was one of them. I am 
therefore not able to report by what more co- 
gent arguments than those urged above, the 
ladies respectively of Messrs. Culpepper and 
Dixon prevailed upon their lords not only to 
allow of, but partake in, the projected excursion 
to " Bullen." But that they did so prevail will 
scarcely be considered as problematical, when I 
aver that the Friday following saw the whole 
party of eight duly installed oh the deck of the 
Superb, steaming away down the river, to their 
hearts' content. 

Having, in my present state of being, a mortal 
or rather an immorta\ antipathy to anything in 
the shape of smoke, the reader will not be sur- 
prised to learn that I declined accompanying our 
travellers any farther than to see them safe off' 
from the Tower stairs. I must therefore consign 
to another pen the task of communicating the 
events consequent on the voyage, 

MISS CLARA CULPEPPER TO HER FRIEND MISS BELINA 
BINKS OF BUCKLERSBTJRY. 

Boulogne, Friday Evening, Sept. 1825. 
Well, my love ! here we are in France, sure 
enough ! but after such a voyage ! — oh my dear, 
the ocean is a frightful beast to be tossed about 



150 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

upon the back of, I do assure you. It was all 
very well at first. Just for all the world like 
going to Margate, only the company was far 
genteeler. But after we had made as nice a 
little pic-nic dinner as could be, off the con- 
tents of our hamper, and were just thinking of 
having a comfortable cup of tea — oh, my dear! 
the wind began to blow — (a " breeze/' they called 
it — a pretty breeze it kicked up among all of us, 
sure enough!) — the sea began to swell up every 
here and there, just as it does in the last scene 
of Paul and Virginia, only worse if anything — 
and all in a moment I began to be so sick, and 
so frightened, and Pa was so cross about having 
consented to come, and Ma was so angry with Ned 
and me for having persuaded her to persuade him, 
and Ned, (who did'nt seem to mind it a bit,) was 
so provoking, and everything was so disagreeable, 
that I can't bear even to think of it now it's all 
over -, so I shall only say that the nasty sea water 
has quite annihilated my sweet green spencer, and 
turned Ma's crimson pelisse all over as black as 
the chimney, and run away with Pa's hat, and 
what's most provoking of all, has got into the box 
that held all Ma's and my pretty lisse caps and 
frills, and washed them all up into a little dirty 
bundle in one corner. 



grimm's ghost. 151 

This is all I can tell you to-night, my love ; 
for Ma is so cross about the caps and frills that 
she says I sha'nt sit up a minute longer. But 
to-morrow I mean to take up my pen again, and 
then I've got such things to tell you ! Oh, my 
dear Bel, you can't imagine what very odd things 
happened to us when we first got here. But Ma 
won't let me scribble, as she calls it, any longer 
—so good night. 

Saturday Morning. 

Well, my love — I feel quite recovered from the 
fatigues and disasters of yesterday — and I ex- 
pect to pass the charmingest day, and I'm so de- 
lighted with France — at least I think I shall be 
— and — but I must tell you about our landing 
first, for I don't think we shall meet with 
anything so odd as that, if we stay here till 
Christmas. 

When we got opposite the Porte of Boulogne — 
(I'm sorry to say I can't tell you anything that 
happened till then, I was so shocking ill) — but 
when we got to the Porte — (By the bye, I wonder, 
my dear, what they can mean by calling it the Porte 
of Boulogne. Porte, you know, means door, in 
French — and there's not a bit of a door, or any^ 
thing of the sort — it all lays as open as Black- 



152 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

heath — but, now I think of it, captains of ships, 
and such kind of persons, can't be expected to 
understand French) — however, when, as I was 
saying, we got opposite Boulogne, what do you 
think the odious captain did ? He made a dead 
stop at about a quarter of a mile from the town, 
and pretended he could'nt get in — that there 
was'nt room, or water enough, or some such non- 
sensical excuse ! Why, he must have thought us 
all fools, I suppose, or blind — for there was oceans 
of water — you could hardly see anything else — and 
as for room, there was enough for fifty ships as 
big as his to have gone in side by side. Ned said 
it was " a regular take in" — but Pa said he did'nt 
see how it could be a " take in" — that if they 
would but take us in, it was all we wanted — but 
as far as he could see they seemed determined on 
keeping us out. However, when they found that 
we would not get out into the nasty little ships 
that came from the town to fetch us, and that 
looked, as Mr. Dixon said, like great empty but- 
ter casks cut down the middle, and a scaffold 
pole stuck up in them with a dirty sheet tied to 
it, — they at last took us into the harbour. 

By the bye, calling this place the harbour 
was the first thing that set Ma off about the in- 
feriorness of the French to us. She said if they 



GRIMM'S GHOST. 153 

did'nt know what a harbour was, better than that, 
it was a pity somebody did'nt learn them — for 
it was no more like the one in which she had so 
often took tea at the bottom of Mr. Mince's 
garden in Camber well Grove, than nothing at all. 

By this time you must suppose us got close 
up to the side of the water, just as it might be 
at Billingsgate, only nothing like it at all, but 
quite different. Here we were met by a string 
of people who had been following by the side of 
us for ever so far, and making such frightful and 
outlandish noises that I was actually afraid to 
look up and see what it was all about. But 
when we stopped close to the side, and I did look 
up — la ! my love, it was really quite shocking, I 
do assure you, besides its being by no means 
what Ma calls proper. Do you know there was 
I dare say a dozen women, some dragging at the 
ropes that were tied to our ship, and others 
squabbling and squalling at each other, about who 
should be the first to lift into the ship a huge 
staircase, on which we were to climb up. And 
all this while there was a whole lot of big sailor- 
looking men, lolling about doing nothing, and never 
offering to help them 1 

But this was nothing, my love, to the state of 
these poor women's dress, or rather their undress. 



154 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Do you know they had on neither bonnets, nor 
gowns, nor — in short, my dear, they did not 
seem to me to have anything on but their stays 
and under petticoats — and they actually reached 
up to their knees ! I declare I did not not know 
what to do, or which way to look, especially when 
I saw Ned and George Dixon whispering and 
smiling to each other, and then casting impudent 
leers at Miss Dixon and me. 

It was night, to be sure, though it was quite 
a fine moonlight. If it had been in the day 
time I'm sure I don't know what I should have 
done. Though, I've been thinking since, that 
the reason of this very unpleasant circumstance 
was, that the poor creatures, not expecting our 
arrival, had gone to bed, and were called up in 
such a hurry that they had not time to put their 
things on. 

Well — after a deal of fuss and to do, we landed 
at last; and when we had got ourselves all to- 
gether, two and two, under the directions of Pa, 
and were going to march off towards the Inn 
which had been recommended to us by a very 
polite French gentleman in the crowd, as " dee 
onlee good for genteel folks," and he was even so 
kind as to offer to shew us the way to it himself, 
which Pa said was doing the civil thing in a 



grimm's ghost. 155 

way he did'nt expect to meet with in a foreign 
country — I say, just as we were going to set off, 
what do you think ? We found that some French 
fellows, with great cocked hats like the lord 
mayor's footmen, and great swords by their sides, 
had actually drawn an enormous chain all round 
us, to prevent our getting away — and they 
would'nt let a soul of us pass ! 

La ! my love, you can't think how frightened 
I was — though I did'nt say anything. And as for 
Ma — she was ready to drop. And well she 
might, for she told us afterwards she thought 
that a war had broke out between us and the 
French since the morning, and that they had 
let us come into their nasty town on purpose to 
make prisoners of war of all of us. 

But we soon found that they only did this out 
of civility, to keep us together till all were landed, 
that we might then go the Custom House and 
show our tickets — for do you know Pa was obliged 
to make interest with a great French lord in 
London before we came away, to get tickets for 
all of us — (passports they call them in French) — or 
else they would not have let us in. And I think 
this is very proper — for you know if it was not 
for this anybody might come, and then how could 
one expect the company to be so select as it 



lb() REJECTED ARTICLES. 

is? Well — when everybody was out of the ship, 
they let down a bit of the great chain that kept us 
together, and away we all marched, two and two, 
to the Custom House, to give in our tickets, and 
then to the Inn, attended all the way by the civil 
French gentleman I told you of before, who we 
heard afterwards was no less a person than a Com- 
missioner — though Pa said he could not find out 
whether he was a Commissioner of the Customs, 
or the Excise. 

I think, by the bye, Pa might have asked him 
to dinner, for he was uncommon civil and at- 
tentive, to be sure. And he spoke very good 
English, too, considering he was only a French- 
man. 

And now good bye, my dear Bel, for a day or 

two; for I have neither time nor room to tell 

you any more at present. And I'm afraid this 

, is so crossed and crossed that you will not be able 

to make it out. Adieu. < 

Your devoted friend 

C. C. 

P. S. I must find a little corner to tell you 
that young Dixon (Dixon's a nasty name — is'nt 
it? — not half so genteel as Culpepper) — but he 
has been vastly attentive. And if it was'nt for 
the recollections of the handsome and interest- 



grimm's ghost. 157 

ing Captain Augustus Thackery (that is some- 
thing like a name!) — I — but I can't squeeze in 
a word more. 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME, 

Boulogne, Saturday Evening. 

Oh ! my dear Bel ! Something so interesting 
has happened. It's quite like one of Miss 
What's- her-name's novels. You know I was 
telling you in my last letter that that foolish 
chap George Dixon had been pestering me with 
his " attentions," as he calls them ; and I told 
you too, or at least I should, if I had had room, 
how I hate and detest his awkward attempts at 
what Ned calls " doing the polite." I believe 
too that a word or two escaped me, on that one 
soft secret of my susceptible heart, which has 
been confided to your sympathetic bosom alone. 

Well, my love, would you believe it? Who 
should we meet here, the very first person on 
going out this morning to look about us in the 
town, but the Captain himself! But I must 
begin where I left off, and tell it you all regular, 
or else I shall never overtake myself, for you know 
I promised to tell you all that happened to_us. 

You may suppose we were all too tired and 
too ill on the night of our arrival, to make many 



158 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

very particular observations on the manners and 
customs of the French people. But as soon as 
ever I got up in the morning I determined to 
begin — for I've often told you how it used to pro- 
voke me to sit and hear that conceited Miss 
Christie, of Crutched Friars, tell a parcel of things 
about France, and not be able to contradict any- 
thing she said. So as soon as ever I had written 
my letter to you, I began to put everything 'down 
in a nice little note-book I made Pa buy me 
before we came away — especially as I promised 
him I would do everything in the world to im- 
prove my mind, if he would but bring us here. 
Besides — the captain is so clever and accomplish- 
ed, that if — but this is not what I was going to say. 
Sarah Dixon and I slept in the same room — 
for you know I should have been terrified out of 
my life to sleep in a room by myself in a foreign 
country. Well — about nine o'clock the Captain 
— no — I mean Ned knocked at our door, and 
bid us make haste down, for the Captain — no 
— I mean the breakfast was ready, and Pa was 
waiting — and that — la ! my love — I really cannot 
stay to tell you all these uninteresting things, 
which happened just as they might have done 
at Margate or at home. I can tell you all these, 
you know, when we meet — especially as I'm sure 



grimm's ghost. 159 

you must be dying to know how it all happened 
about the Captain, and how he looks, and what 
he said, and every thing. So I shall merely say 
that we had a nice breakfast of regular English 
tea and eggs, dry toast, and twists, and a nice 
little plate of beef— just as it might have been at 
Dandelion — (I knew it was all stories that Miss 
Christie was telling, about the strangeness of the 
French customs, and about their eating dinners 
for breakfast) — and then we all went and dressed 
to go out. 

Sarah Dixon would put on that odious frock of 
her's, with the great staring crimson stripe on the 
green ground, which you know we both agreed she 
looks so very vulgar in. But I did not say anything 
to her about it, for she will have her own way. 

I'll tell you exactly how I was dressed — and 
I must say I thought I never looked neater. I 
had on a new morning frock that Pa bought me 
just before we came away. The sweetest thing ! 
-—so new, and so genteel, and so French — and 
made so pretty a la blouse as the French call it. 
I got Ma to let me have it made at the west 
end — in Sydney's Alley. It's the sweetest pattern 
you ever saw— a crimson and blue stripe shaded 
off somehow into nothing, just like a rainbow 
upon a primrose ground — and then a sort of zig- 



160 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

zag running all over it — for all the world like 
thunder and lightning. It comes high up at the 
throat — and has five broad tucks made the cross 
way — and I've got the sweetest scarlet leather 
cincture for it, with a steel buckle to buckle on 
the left side. I wore nothing over it but a green 
silk half handkerchief buckled into the band be- 
hind and before — for you know I told you the 
nasty sea water annihilated all our frills, and I 
did'nt like to be beholden to Sarah Dixon for one 
— especially as her's are all so odiously ugly. 

I had on my head my pretty little pink silk 
cottage bonnet — that one, you know, that every 
body says I look so nice in — that only just comes 
even with my face, and shews my profile — that 
everybody says — I mean that the Captain said 
yesterday — I mean — la ! my dear — what do I 
mean ? — How very confused I do get. I was go- 
ing to say that under the bonnet I wore that 
sweet little lace cap that I bought that morn- 
ing at the Bazaar when you were with me — don't 
you remember ? And under that I wore the 
sweetest pair of rose-buds stuck one just over 
each temple. And then, you know, all my nice 
corkskrew curls that I had kept in papers for 
two whole days on purpose. You know every 
body says what nice hair I have, and how nice 



gkimm's ghost. 161 

I do it — and as for the Captain — he says — but stay 
— I'm not come to him yet. 

Well, my dear, I've now told you exactly how 
I was dressed, except that I had on my nankeen 
boots which lace up inside, and fit me so delight- 
fully that I can hardly walk in them. As for Pa 
and Ma, and old Mr. and Mrs. Dixon, I can't 
stay to tell you how they were dressed, except 
that Pa will keep wearing those nasty gaiters 
that he bought in Cranbourne Alley, and that I 
believe he wears on purpose that he may have to 
tell everybody they are alley gaiters* — though 
why they laugh when he tells them so, I never 
could make out, or why, if it's such a laughing 
matter, he should be so fond of telling it. 

But la ! my dear — I shall fill my paper again, 
without getting to the dear Captain. As I was 
saying, we all got ready to go out immediately 
after breakfast, and at last out we sallied, two 
and two in a string — Pa and Ma and Mr. and 
Mrs. Dixon walking together by themselves, and 
we young ones following — though Ned would 
not walk with me as I wanted him, but would 
make me take hold of that foolish George Dixon's 
arm, though he knows very well how I hate him, 
and how provoked I should be if the Captain — I 

* Qy. alligators. — Printer's Devil.. 

M 



162 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

mean how provoked I was when the Captain— in 
short, my dear, we had hardly walked half the 
length of the street in which the inn is, and were 
all standing still in a row looking up at the beauti- 
fullest picture you ever saw, which is oddly enough 
stuck up outside the house instead of inside, and 
which Pa says he asked a gentleman that he met 
at the inn since, how it came to be hung outside 
the house, and what it was a picture of — and the 
gentleman said it was a sign — and Pa said a sign 
of what ? and the gentleman smiled, and said it 
was a sign that the French artists are the best sign 
painters in the world, and — but where was I — 
oh — we were all standing still, looking up at this 
beautiful picture — when who should I see pass by 
us but Captain Augustus Thackery himself! I 
knew him in a moment— though he has had almost 
all his beautiful whiskers cut off, and had on 
only a common blue coat, and white pantaloons, 
and did'nt look like a captain at all. 

La ! my dear, you might have knocked me 
down with a feather. My heart did beat so, 
you can't think. Meeting him, you know, under 
such very romantic circumstances — in a foreign 
country — and so unexpectedly — and I hold of that 
nasty George Dixon's arm too — and every thing. 

I declare I did'nt know what to do. How- 



GRIMM'S GHOST. 163 

ever, I had plenty of time to recover myself — 
for though the Captain looked full at us all as 
he passed— at least at me and Sarah Dixon — 
and turned round to look at us after he got by — 
yet he did'nt know us a bit, no more than if he 
had never seen us. I think I told you he wears 
a beautiful quizzing glass — which accounts for 
his not seeing us. Well — on he passed without 
ever seeing us, though he looked at us all the 
time. And to tell you the truth, I'm not sorry 
for it now — though I was monstrously disappointed 
at the time — for if he had seen us, and come up 
and spoke to us, I declare I do think I should 
have dropped. You see, my dear Bel, I have 
filled my paper cram full again, without getting 
to the end — or rather hardly to the beginning — of 
our adventure with the Captain. But to-morrow 
I mean to devote a whole sheet to nothing else — 
about how we met him again the same evening 
when I was walking alone with George Dixon— 
and how he did see us then the moment he came 
near us — and how he came up to me and took 
hold of my hand — and how — in short, every thing 
about it. So adieu till to-morrow dear Bel. 
Ever your devoted friend, 

c. c. 

M 2 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 



WILLIAM HAZLTTT. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, * 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



We are going to perform a novel undertaking, 
It is, to speak the truth of William Hazlitt. This 
writer has been praised more than he deserves ; 
and yet not enough. And he has been abused 
more than he or than any man deserves ; and yet 
his faults have never been pointed out. In short, 

* This paper was for obvious reasons " rejected" from a late 
publication, entitled The Spirit of the Age ; and it was, I suppose 
for the same reasons, refused admission into the amusing periodi- 
cal in which a portion of that work had previously appeared. 
I feel peculiar satisfaction in being able to pi-esent this paper to 
the public ; — first, because it is more than probable that, but for 
this particular medium, it would never have seen the light at all ; 
and secondly, because there can be no doubt whatever, in regard 
to the person whose portrait is here drawn, that, as " none but 
himself can be his parallel," so none but himself either can or dare 
give a true account of him.-*— Editor. 



168 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

he has been praised and abused through thick and 
thin ; but he has never yet been estimated. 
He shall be so now, as nearly as we are able to 
do it. 

We have had some doubts about placing Mr. 
Hazlitt's portrait among those whose intellects 
make up "The Spirit of the Age ;" because strict- 
ly speaking none are entitled to that rank who 
have not positively and directly contributed to 
create that spirit, or are pretty sure sooner or later 
to do so : and Mr. Hazlitt neither has nor ever 
. will. But we could not persuade ourselves to 
exclude him from* a company of which we have 
thought JeofFry Crayon, and two or three others 
who shall be equally nameless, not unworthy to 
come among the number. 

If a better reason than the above is desired, all 
we have to give is, that if Mr. Hazlitt has not set 
his mark upon the Age in which he lives, it is his 
own fault. He might have done it if he would, and 
in signs and characters that those who run might 
read. It is a sufficient misfortune to his Age and 
to himself that he has not done so, and will 
not, without its being made an excuse for de- 
priving our readers of a portrait that they will 
probably look for with some curiosity, if it is only 
in expectation of the abuse that they have so long 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 169 

been accustomed to see connected with his name ; 
Mr. Hazlitt being for the most part known only 
through the medium of the Quarterly Review 
and Blackwood's Magazine. And by the bye, that 
abuse itself, reaching us through the above-named 
mediums, may be offered as tolerably conclusive 
collateral evidence that we are not doing any great 
wrong in placing Mr. Hazlitt's name in our list ; 
for the person whom those publications " delight 
to c/z'shonour," may be safely pronounced to be no 
insignificant one at least. But let us " leave this 
face-making, and begin." 

No writer ever acquired marked distinction in 
his day, of whose writings something might not be 
said, either in relation to kind or to degree, which 
could not be said of any others whatever. And 
perhaps this is the best criterion that can be 
given, to determine who is and who is not entitled 
to rank among the Spirits of the Age in which he 
lives. In regard to Mr. Hazlitt's writings, this 
one distinguishing quality is the unrivalled power 
which they display of looking into the hidden 
truth of things. He pierces the depths of human 
life, and " plucks out the heart of their mystery." 
His pen is like Itburiel's spear; whatever it touches 
starts up before us in its naked truth. If you are 



170 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

afraid to hear the truth you must not listen to 
him ; for it will out, whatever may be the conse- 
quences. And this even when the truth in ques- 
tion is a personal one. But when it is an abstract 
truth that he happens to hit upon, " away at once 
with love and jealousy !" out it must come, even 
though it should blacken his dearest friend or 
brighten his bitterest foe ; for the truth is to him 
— the truth. 

Perhaps it may be said that the leading feature 
of Mr. Hazlitt's mind — that which constitutes its 
great strength as well as its great weakness — is 
this passion which he cherishes, to the exclusion 
of all others, for abstract truth; for his other 
passion, for Liberty, is but a branch or off-set of 
this. He would not scruple, upon occasion, to 
tell a lie, out of pure love for the truth ! just as he 
would assist in making himself and everybody 
else slaves in practice, out of his love for Liberty in 
the abstract. This may seem paradoxical, but it 
is capable of an easy explanation. He has a 
catholic zeal for the truth ; and though he would 
not die a martyr to it in a bodily sense, (for we 
venture to guess that he is constitutionally timid 
in regard to bodily suffering), yet he would not 
scruple to sacrifice his principles to it, and his 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 3 71 

sense of practical justice : just as a lover is 
always fonder of his passion than of his mistress, 
and would at any time sacrifice the latter to the 
former. 

A consequence of Mr. Hazlitt's indestructible 
passion for abstract truth is, the absolutely un- 
changeable nature of all his opinions. With 
him a thing either is, or is not; and there is 
no disputing about it. He would even interpret 
literally the old axiom, De gustibus ?io?i est dis- 
putandum, and insist that a man either has a taste 
for truth and beauty, or he has it not ; and that 
he who prefers falsehood and deformity, or even 
the lesser degree of beauty to the greater, does so 
not because he sees with- another eye, but because 
he does not see at all ; not because his faculties 
are different, but because they are defective. If you 
tell him, for example, that you prefer a picture of 
Correggio's to one of Raphael's, he will not let you 
off in virtue of the above maxim ; though he is 
too modest a man to be the first to dispute the 
point with you. But if you are imprudent 
enough to insist on " giving a reason for the faith 
that is in you," then the chances are that he will 
not only prove but proclaim you a fool for your 
pains. 



172 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

It has been said of Cobbett, that he has not 
one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions. It 
may in the same manner be said of Hazlitt, that 
he has no one opinion which is uot& Mrs. Hazlitt. 
He was wedded to every one of them in his youth, 
and he- has stuck to them ever since, " through 
good report and through evil report." Not but 
what we believe he would be very glad to be di- 
vorced from some of them a mensa et thoro ; for 
if we may judge from some parts of his writings, 
they lead him a sad life between them ; particu- 
larly those of them that trouble their heads about 
Politics. But it is no easy matter to make up 
one's mind to part for ever from a wife that one 
loves, however ill she may treat us, or whatever 
we may be forced to suffer through her follies or 
extravagancies. And perhaps the more wives a 
man has, the less inducement he feels for getting 
rid of any one that he may be suffering by. In 
Turkey, where a man may have as many as he 
pleases, the law of divorce is a dead letter. 

But besides these considerations, Mr. Hazlitt 
has a conscience, touching his intellectual ties, 
however he may feel himself too poor to afford to 
keep one in other matters. He took his opinions 
" for better for worse ;" and he cannot how per- 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 173 

suade himself to kick them out of doors merely 
because with their youth they may have lost some 
of their pristine freshness and beauty. One thing 
we will say in his favour on this head ; (and it 
even makes up for all the faults that have been 
imputed to him, much more for those which 
he actually possesses) : it is this — if some of the 
opinions to which he is wedded have long been 
" the plague of his life," and he would fain 
have been ' without them in an honest way, 
he has never yet been base enough to connive 
at their prostituting themselves, in order that 
he might make that an excuse for getting quit of 
them ! 

To escape at once from this long-winded meta- 
phor, — Mr. Hazlitt commenced his career as a 
thinker, (though not as an author), at that period 
which produced several more of the most distin- 
guished writers of the day. He was, at the 
breaking out of the French Revolution, one of 
a band of youthful enthusiasts, who implicitly 
believed in all the moral truth and beauty which 
that event held forth the hopes of, and who were 
all acted upon by it in an equal degree, though all 
in a different manner. We allude, besides Mr. 
Hazlitt, to his then friends, Messrs. Wordsworth, 



174 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Coleridge, Southey, and Dr. Stoddart. This 
associated band of intellectual brothers included 
a few more names ; but these are the only ones 
which have since become distingushed. 

Upon Mr. Wordsworth this event acted but as 
a confirmation of his preconceived notions touch- 
ing the nature and destiny of man. If Mr. Words- 
worth is the most philosophical of poets, or the 
most poetical of philosophers, (which you will), 
he is even more of a philosopher than a poet. 
This event, therefore, was for him only a natural 
and necessary corollary from the premises to which 
he had early made up his mind ; and it moved 
him no jot from " the even tenor of his way." He 
wrote ballads, then, about Alice Fells and Idiot 
Boys, just as he writes them about Peter Bells 
and Waggoners, now, that all his bright hopes have 
blasted in the bud by the pestiferous breath of 
the hag Legitimacy, which he and his friends in 
their mistaken humanity helped to escape with 
her life, instead of, as they ought, treading her 
black blood and rotten bones into the soil which 
she had so long polluted, or burning them in a 
great auto da ft on the altar of human liberty, 
and scattering their ashes to the four winds of 
heaven, amid shouts of holy exultation that the 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 175 

angels themselves might have listened to on their 
thrones of light. 

But Mr. Wordsworth is a philanthropist as 
well as a philosopher ; and we must not wonder, 
therefore, if he was willing to connive at sparing 
the lives of half a dozen kings ; though his boast- 
ed philosophy might have taught him that it must 
be done at the cost of those of millions upon 
millions of their subjects ; to say nothing of that 
of Liberty herself — which is worth them all ! 

The personal consequences to Mr. Wordsworth 
have been exactly what they ought :— he is patro- 
nized by Lord Lonsdale, praised by Mr. GifFord, 
and paid out of the pockets of the people ! 

On Mr. Coleridge the effects of the French 
Revolution and its failure were as different as the 
different nature of the two minds on which they 
were to operate. Mr. Coleridge lives but in dreams 
of poetry, and mystic revelations from other worlds • 
and this event promised to be the parent of such 
dreams and revelations as had not till then visited 
the mind of man. What then could he do, 
when all these " gorgeous palaces " of our intellec- 
tual pride, these " solemn temples" of our human 
hopes and affections, were either levelled with the 
dust and their golden images broken in pieces and 



176 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

trodden under foot, or (still worse) turned into 
marts for money-changers and dens for thieves ; 
and when all the fairy fabric had melted away (as it 
soon afterwards did) " like breath into the wind ;" 
what, we say, could Mr. Coleridge be expected to 
do under such circumstances, but " wink, and 
shut his apprehension up " for a brief space, and 
then sink into that listless state, between sleeping 
and waking, in which he has remained ever since ? 

And yet Coleridge was the wisest of the set, 
after all ; or at any rate he was the happiest ; 
which is much the same thing. Until the French 
Revolution came, he knew of nothing better in 
the world than his own talk about his own fancies ; 
and when it ceased to exist it left him just where 
it found him. He had done nothing but talk before ; 
(and how could he do better, considering what his 
talk is?) and he has done nothing else since. 
And the only difference its failure has made to 
him is, that he has one more subject to talk about : 
which indeed he would if it had succeeded ; so 
that to him it has made no difference at all. 

Alas ! not so to Mr. Southey. The breaking 
out of the French Revolution found him " a poet," 
in the purest and loftiest sense of that pure and 
lofty title. And its failure has left him — a Poet- 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 177 

laureat ! Ill betide those who caused that failure, 
if for nothing but for this alone ! The French 
Revolution came upon Mr. Southey like a flash of 
lightning breaking over a traveller in sight of a 
nobly extended prospect at midnight ; not only 
revealing for a moment to his half benighted 
senses a thousand objects that he had not even 
hoped to see, but decking them all in a beauty 
not their own. Alas ! where is that prospect now ! 
" Whither is fled the glory and the dream ?" 
No wonder, when the sky closed again, and made 
all by the contrast seem ten times darker than it 
was before — no wonder that the author of Wat 
Tyler and Joan of Arc should wilfully shut his 
eyes upon the scene, and after wandering about 
for a while amidst the dreary darkness, find him- 
self at last walking up the steps of Carlton Palace, 
with a dress sword by his side, an opera hat under 
his arm, and a copy of the Quarterly Review and 
the Vision of Judgment sticking out of each poc- 
ket of his cut velvet coat ! 

Foul befal those (we repeat it) who brought 
about that bitter change ! For all the other 
changes which that fatal blow to the hopes of 
human liberty brought with it, we could have 
found " some drop of patience ;" because all 

N 



178 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

the others, if they were not anticipated, might 
have been. 

" But there, where we had garnered up our hearts ! 
To be discarded thence — 
Or keep it as a cistern for foul tori/ism 
To knot and gender in ! 

Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubim, 
Turn thy complexion there, ay, there look grim 
As hell !" 

But no more of this. 

It is not worth while to inquire what were the 
changes wrought on the then unknown, but 
since notorious Dr. Stoddart, by. the great event 
we have alluded to ; for it is true (though Mr. 
Croker has said it) that " once a Jacobin always 
a Jacobin j" and the Editor of the Old and New 
Times was never anything better. He took up 
the trade then because it gave him an opportunity 
of indulging his natural disposition to blacken his 
betters ; and he has laid it by for that of Editor 
of a Tory newspaper, for the same reason. How this 
person contrives to live at all, now that he who 
was lately, even while bound to his barren rock, 
" the foremost man of all this world," is laid in 
his lowly grave, and no longer a butt for the 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 179 

poisoned arrows of his filthy abuse, is more than 
we can imagine. Probably he consoles himself 
with the soothing reflection that he assisted in 
sending him there. 

So much for the effect of the French Revolution 
on the early associates of Mr. Hazlitt. On him- 
self it worked a change less noticeable than on his 
friends, but more worthy of notice. It found him 
still a youth, and his youthful faculties, however 
prematurely developed in some respects, more 
than proportionately backward in others. He was 
a reasoner and a metaphysician even then ; but he 
was not then what he soon afterwards became — 
a man of deep sensibility, of a most vigorous 
and profound if not an excursive imagination, 
and a fancy active and vivacious in the highest 
degree. 

The event in question promised to realize all the 
conclusions, in regard to the fitness of things, and 
their conformity with natural truth and justice^, 
which Mr. Hazlitt's logical understanding had at 
that time enabled him to reach. And these pro- 
mises so far exceeded any hopes that he could 
have previously entertained, (for his temperament 
is anything but sanguine,) that they must have 
produced an instantaneous and an almost miracu- 
lous effect, in developing those other faculties which 

n 2 



180 



REJECTED ARTICLES. 



we have ascribed to him, and which are usually 
so seldom allied to extraordinary powers of reason- 
ing. But, however this may be, those other facul- 
ties were developed about this time; the early 
successes of the good cause urged them forward 
in their course, and impelled them to a pitch of 
almost diseased activity ; and then, in the midst 
of all this tumult of irrepressible exultation at the 
re-appearance of those hopes of human liberty 
which had for so many ages been hidden in the 
secret hearts of a few lone enthusiasts — -in the 
midst of this came crime, and bloodshed, and 
shame ; and then an instinctive combination of 
all the bad of the earth against all the good ; 
and at last the consequent triumph of the former, 
as they always must triumph while the latter 
refuse to avail themselves of the same ways and 
the same weapons. If the people of the earth 
had felt no more remorse at shedding drops of 
blood than its kings did and do at shedding oceans, 
all would have been well, and that people would not 
have seen their own blood poured forth like water, 
and their miseries laughed to scorn. As it is, they 
have more than half deserved their fate. 

But what must have been the effect of all this 
on a mind like Mr. Hazlitt's ? We must not 
dwell upon the picture. Suffice it to say, that 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 181 

" He, repulsed, (a short tale to make) 

Fell into a sadness — then into a fast — 

Thence into a watch — then into a weakness — 

Thence to a lightness ; and by this declension 

Into the madness wherein he (sometimes) raves 

And we all mourn for." 

But let us not forget to mention one thing. To 

Mr. Hazlitt's eternal honour be it spoken, whatever 

else the failure of all his hopes and aspirations made 

of him, it did not make him an apostate. And 

which of his early friends, " all honourable men" as 

they are, can say as much ? Because those hopes 

were blasted in their bloom, and lost the odour of 

their sweetness, he did not turn round upon them 

with a feigned contempt, and after " casting them 

like loathsome weeds away," fling himself at the 

feet of the blasters. Because his arm was too 

weak to overthrow the car of the great Juggernaut, 

Legitimacy, he did not basely cast himself beneath 

its blood-stained wheels — a willing sacrifice to the 

object of his execrations. Because he found from 

fatal experience that man was not made to be only 

" a little lower than the angels," he did not lend a 

helping hand to put harness on his back, and sink 

him to a lower level than that of the brutes that 

perish. In short, because Liberty, the betrothed 

of his early hopes, the divinity of his youthful 

adoration, proved false and " haggard," he did 



182 



REJECTED AHTTCLES. 



not " cast her off to beggarly divorcement,' 7 and 
thus prove that it was not her but himself he was 
loving all the while ; but he clung to her more 
closely the more she was deserted by others ; and 
fallen and polluted as she is, has worshipped 
her with a religious idolatry ever since. Let but 
this one truth be written on his tomb-stone, and 
with all his faults, (of which he has his full 
share), his name shall be repeated with respect 
when those of his ci-devant friends " stink in the 
nostrils of posterity." 

Those friends may say, perhaps, that he has 
not been tempted like them, or like them he would 
have fallen. But this is begging the question 
with a vengeance ; or worse — it is stealing it. No 
sophistry can annul the vital difference that exists 
between them. It is a matter of bare fact, and it 
stands simply thus : they abandoned the principles 
on which they commenced their career, the mo- 
ment it became dangerous and unprofitable to 
hold them ; and he has held by them manfully to 
the last. In a word, they are apostates, and 
he is not. 

But " something too much of this." It w r ould 
not have been introduced at all here, if the cir- 
cumstances immediately connected with it had 
not produced a marked effect on the intellectual 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 183 

features of the person whose portrait we are at- 
tempting to sketch. The French Revolution rose 
like a beautiful meteor, only to dazzle the eye for 
a moment, and then to set in blood ; and with it 
set for ever the momentary hopes of our young 
searcher after truth. And as their last rays re- 
ceded from his eyes upon the distant horizon, and 
he saw at the same time his early friends and 
companions — men to whom he had looked up 
with the most unfeigned reverence — falling down 
in ignoble worship before the idols that were rising 
from the earth in an opposite direction, a black 
and baleful melancholy seemed to be settling within 
his heart ; a cherished distrust in his fellow men 
took possession of his imagination ; an indignant 
scowl seated itself upon his magnificent brow, 
(like a demon usurping the throne that was erect- 
ed for a god) ; a pallid languor hung upon his 
cheeks and lips, and dragged them downwards; 
his shoulders became bowed and bent as if a 
world of disappointments were resting and pressing 
upon them ; and he went wandering about among 
his fellow men, as he has done ever since, in loose 
attire, a shambling gait, and a sinister look, the 
very picture of a man possessed by a spirit of 
mingled hatred and contempt for all the world, 
and most of all for himself, 



184 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

This is a sorry picture to be obliged to draw, of 
a man towards whom we feel as we do towards Mr. 
Hazlitt. But we promised our readers the truth, 
and it shall be told. And at any rate he will not 
be the person to complain of it ; for, to say no- 
thing of his being the most bold and reckless 
truth-teller of the day, he has still one love left : — 
his passion for truth is not yet extinguished, and 
he will bear to hear it with equanimity even of 
himself. 

If it should be said that we have dwelt too long 
on the merely personal part of our picture, we 
could not help it. It is a theme that will have its 
way, when it comes across us. We must endea- 
vour to make up for our transgression in what 
follows. 

We have said that the most distinguishing fea- 
ture of Mr. Hazlitt's mind, as displayed in his 
writings, is its unrivalled power of piercing into 
the truth. When there is nothing, either from 
without or from within, to affect the natural 
powers of his vision, perhaps, to use a vulgar 
phrase, he " sees farther into the mill-stone" than 
any man that ever lived. But on the other hand, 
there is this to be said of him : he frequently sees 
farther into it than its proper thickness ; he sees • 
more than is to be seen. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 185 

We are willing to believe that this results, in 
most cases, from his determination to say striking 
things. He writes for his bread. (We need not 
scruple to say here what we learn from those 
writings themselves.) He writes for his bread ; 
and therefore he must write what people will read. 
If the subject on which he happens to be writing- 
is capable of a popular development consistently 
with truth, well and good ; but it must have one 
at all events. If he determines that half a dozen 
brilliant things must be said on a given topic, 
and only three present themselves naturally, three 
more must be made. " Be brilliant/' — is his 
business maxim in these matters ; in conformity 
with reason and common-sense if you can ; but — 
be brilliant. 

It is astonishing the mischievous effect this has 
produced upon his writings ; and if nothing 
should hereafter occur to induce him to care more 
about his reputation than he at present seems to 
do, or look better after it while he lives, when he 
dies it will not be strong enough to take care of 
itself. If the profound and subtle truths, and 
the admirable illustrations and applications of 
them, scattered about at random through half a 
dozen of Mr. Hazlitt's volumes, had made their 
appearance in a well-concocted form in one, that 



186 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

one would have gone down to posterity, a monu- 
ment of human penetration and wisdom scarcely 
inferior in value to the Essays of Lord Bacon. 
But as it is, the false coin and the true are so 
completely intermixed, that common observers, 
not being able to distinguish which is which, re- 
fuse to take either : and after all, it is of common 
observers that the posterity of every age is com- 
posed. 

If Mr. Hazlitt says that all this is his own 
concern, and that if it pleases him to shew his 
contempt for his readers and his reputation at 
the same time, by pouring forth flashy falsehoods 
and profound truths in a mingled stream, reck- 
less of the effect of either, no man has a right to 
say him nay ; — we admit the proposition. But in 
return we require him to admit, without com- 
plaining, the consequences of such foolish, not to 
say w r icked indifference. He would have us be- 
lieve, and we do believe, that he loves Truth better 
than anything else in the world ; indeed that he 
cares about nothing else. And yet he treats her 
with that cavalier indifference with which some 
men treat their wives and mistresses, who would 
yet be very indignant at having their love called 
in question. But we must tell Mr. Hazlitt that 
in nine cases out of ten, those who treat the ob- 



THE S1MRIT OF THE AGE. 187 

jccts of their supposed love with indifference, ac- 
tually feel it for them. And that even in the 
tenth case (which we admit to be his) they do 
not love them as they think they do, or as they 
would have us think. Besides which, it is a 
shrewd evidence of littleness of heart, not to 
treat the betrothed of our affections as if we con- 
sidered her worthy of them. The chastity of 
Caesar's wife was not even to be suspected. 
And so it must be with the love of those who 
make Truth the object of their idolatry. She 
will not have it even suspected that they bestow 
upon her but half a heart ; and still less can she 
bear to have it supposed that her only hated rival, 
Falsehood, enjoys the other half. 

There is another thing which does great mis- 
chief to Mr. Hazlitt's writings in their own day, 
though it will not have much effect on them here- 
after. He makes them the vehicles of his per- 
sonal feelings in regard to living persons about 
whom his living readers care but little, and about 
whom posterity will neither know nor care one 
farthing ; — he uses them as instruments of his re- 
venge for supposed injuries, and gratitude for 
supposed favours, received not in his character 
of a writer, but a private man. If a person foi; 



188 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

whom he feels bui a slender portion of respect 
lends him a hundred pounds when he could have 
little expected it, he proclaims him in his next 
volume, " the prince of critics, and the king of 
men." And if another, whom he perhaps does re- 
spect, passes him in the street without seeing him, 
he writes him down " a rascal" on the very first 
opportunity that offers. If Mr. Hazlitt says, as 
perhaps he may, that if self-preservation is the 
first law of nature, gratitude and revenge are the 
second and third, and that if you cannot have 
them in one way, you must in another — we shall 
not dispute it. All we say is, that such a mode 
of achieving them leads him into the most ridi- 
culous dilemmas ; besides taking away from his 
writings that " broad and general air" which 
should belong to them, and making them 

" cabinned, cribbed, confined, 

Bound in to saucy doubts and fears." 

Mr. Hazlitt is one of those rare writers who 
teach you what, but for them, you never would have 
known : and this we take to be the true criterion 
of genius, in whatever department of human in- 
quiry it may be found. Some of the moral truths 



THE SPIRIT OF THE ACE. 189 

which he has stated and developed would have 
remained for ever among the hidden secrets of 
nature, if he had not lived to draw them forth. 
We do not of course mean to state that it re- 
quired a degree of mental power never attained 
before, to enable him to produce certain portions 
of his writings. What we mean is, that it re- 
quired precisely that degree which is possessed by 
him, added "to his other qualities of sensibility, 
excitability, &c. and that these together amount 
to what we consent to call genius. Without any- 
thing like this degree of mental power, he might 
have been quite as lively, as brilliant, and as po- 
pular a writer as he is ; and if we are obliged to 
add quite as useful, it is because he has chosen, 
not absolutely to misapply those powers, but to 
leave them wwapplied. But still, without precisely 
that degree of capacity possessed by him, and 
unless that degree had amounted to genius, he 
could not have done certain things that he has 
done. 

This leads us to state what is perhaps the most 
distinguishing fact connected with Mr. Hazlitt as 
a prose writer of the nineteenth century. He is 
the only one of them all whose powers do amount 
to genius : we mean, those who have addicted 
themselves to prose exclusively ; for we are not 



190 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

aware that Mr. Hazlitt has ever written a line of 
poetry, except in his prose. 

By the bye, we take this to be a singular fact ; 
though one that it would perhaps be not very 
difficult to account for. Mr. Hazlitt has dis- 
played as enthusiastic a passion for poetry, and 
as acute a judgment and delicate a sensibility 
in detecting its beauties, as any one of his co- 
temporaries. There is a maxim, too, which 
is pretty generally admitted, that " none but a 
poet can criticise a poet." And yet Mr. Hazlitt 
has never attempted a line of poetry himself. 
The reason is this : he has never written poetry, 
because he is able to think it, and feel it, just as 
well vjithout writing it : for as to his writing- 
poetry, or any thing else, with a direct view to 
any one's benefit but his own — that is entirely out 
of the question with him ; partly from a selfish 
indifference to the good of others, which has been 
superinduced on his natural disposition by the 
events of his early life ; but chiefly, we verily be- 
lieve, from a shrewd suspicion, that if " a great 
book is a great evil," a small one is only so much 
the less evil. But however this may be, perhaps, 
no poem was ever yet written that it might be 
read. Poets write because their faculties require 
the stimulus of composition, before they can reach 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 191 

that state of excitement in which their being, as 
poets, consists ; — they sit down to write, not be- 
cause they are poets at the moment, but in order 
that they may become such. If it were not for 
this, heaven knows, those who are not poets would 
have little chance of enjoying any of those 
feelings which poetry excites ; at least, so long 
as the market price of poetry remains, generally 
speaking, infinitely below that of prose, in pro- 
portion to the time required for its production. 
We conceive Mr. Hazlitt's imagination to be 
so intense, his fancy so active, and his sensi- 
bility so acute, that he sees poetry in every- 
thing, and feels it at all times ; and therefore, 
he never writes it. Let any bookseller pay 
him fifty guineas (beforehand !) for five hundred 
lines of poetry, and see if he will not produce them. 
But otherwise, why should he, when he can get 
four times the sum for as many pages of prose 
that would hardly cost him more time ? # 

* We would wish our readers to take this speculation cum 
grano salis, so far as regards those who have written poetry in 
the present day. We will not pretend to state it as our belief 
that all the vast mass of our co temporary poetry was written 
purely for the immediate pleasure of writing it ; and assuredly, 
very little of it was written for the money that was to be made 
by it. No doubt, the motive which produced the greater part of 
it. was triple — present pleasure, profit, and reputation. So far 



192 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

It is not generally known that Mr. Hazlitt stu- 
died Painting for several years, and practised as 
an artist ; and that he has executed some copies 
from Titian which are looked upon by pretty good 
judges as among the best that have ever been 
done after that master — whom it is almost as diffi- 
cult to copy as to rival. But though no one else 
was dis-satisfied with the progress he made in 
Painting, he himself was. He did not see why he 
should be inferior to any man ; and when he found 
that he was so, he threw up his pencil in disgust, 
and has never touched it since. 

He then came to London, and was engaged as 
Parliamentary reporter for some of the daily 

as relates to Mr. Hazlitt himself our speculation rests on the 
express understanding- that his motive to write is profit alone.* 
Not that he is careless about reputation. No man of fine genius 
ever was. He is even greedy of it, and would enjoy no small 
share if it could be had merely for the trouble of wishing for. 
But he is utterly incapable of acting with a direct and immediate 
view to its acquirement. 

* If the reader should detect some little inconsistency between 
this passage and another at p. 190, where the writer says that 
the subject of his notice does not write poetry " because he 
is able to think it and feel it just as well icithout writing it," 
he must not complain of me, at least. I am not editor enough 
to pretend to make these articles better than I find them. Still 
less do I offer a selection of the " beauties" of our popular prose 
writers. I give the matter just as it comes to hand — adhering 
with strictness even to the punctuation. — Editor. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 193 

papers. From this laborious but useful drudgery 
he was promoted to purveyor of theatrical critiques, 
and other occasional paragraphs ; in which his 
power of thought and of style soon shone out in a 
manner not a little marvellous in the eyes of those 
who had hitherto looked to the Morning Post for 
their beau-ideal of such matters. There can be 
little doubt that we owe almost entirely to him 
the present tone of our theatrical criticism, — which 
is not absolutely contemptible ; whereas, at the 
time we speak of, it was infinitely below con- 
tempt. 

About the same time, too, or shortly after, he 
began writing under the form of essays, in weekly 
papers ; (chiefly, we believe, the Examiner) ; and 
evinced a boldness and originality of thought, and 
a spirit and vigour of style, that excited consider- 
able attention among a certain class of readers, 
but much less than they deserved generally, on ac- 
count of an evidently careless, not to say insolent 
disregard of the commonly received opinions of the 
day, which accompanied almost all he put forth, 
When an important truth occurred to him, he did 
not, any more than he does now, tender it politely 
for your examination, nnically folded up in a 
genteel wrapper of gentle phrases, as if he was 



194 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

afraid it might contaminate your touch ; but he 
flung it in its simple nakedness, right in the face 
of the most deep-rooted prejudice of the day, 
or the most wide-spread interest; and if those 
whom it concerned did not like to pick it up, they 
might leave it. When he was determined to 
make war upon a well-bred lie, or a fashionably 
attired sophistry, he did not send a friend to call 
upon it, provided with a politely penned challenge, 
written on hot-pressed and gilt-edged paper, and 
sealed with his coat of arms ; but he flung his 
mailed glove smack down before it wherever he 
happened to meet it, and dared it once " to the 
outrance." 

Soon after this, Mr. Hazlitt was engaged to 
give Lectures on English poetry, at the Surry In- 
stitution, which were afterwards published in a. 
collected form. This brought him much more into 
public notice than he had hitherto been ; though 
in the literary world he had for some time past 
been pretty generally looked upon as a person 
of first-rate ability. But while it gained him 
many admirers that he would not otherwise have 
met with, by presenting his opinions in a tangible 
and cognizable form, it placed him at the mercy of 
those who have no mercy, much less justice, when 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 195 

the paltry interests of their employers are threaten- 
ed from the remotest distance with invasion, or 
even with examination. 

What followed is too well known to need re- 
petition here. Mr. Hazlitt has ever since been 
the butt and byeword of all the base hirelings of 
the day ; from the editor of the Quarterly Review, 
downwards, or upwards — which you will, — for 
there is not a pin to choose between them, in lite- 
rary rank any more than in moral respectability. 
On every successive publication he has been as- 
sailed by the mingled hootings and execrations of 
those who have no other honours to bestow. 

Let it not be supposed that we refer to this fact 
under any affected feelings of pity or deprecation. 
Mr. Hazlitt is among the last persons in the world 
to claim exemption, when the lex talionis is the 
order of the day — as it is at present ; for no one 
ever stood less nice than he does about taking the 
exact measurement of personal merit in a political 
adversary, or of awarding precisely the deserved 
number of blows to any unfortunate delinquent of 
this sort who may happen to fall into his hands. 
So far from it, he seems to think all fair in politics, 
whatever he may in love ; and when he is in the 
mood for it, would as soon call Mr. Wordsworth 
a knave as he would Mr. Theodore Hook. 

o 2 



196 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

We merely refer to the unmeasured abuse that 
has been heaped on Mr. Hazlitt, as a striking sign 
of the Spirit of the Age. We firmly believe, in- 
deed, that he would have fallen into this error in 
regard to others, in whatever age he had lived ; 
because it is a vice of his blood, and he can no 
more help it than he can help dashing his racket 
or his head against the wall when he makes a bad 
stroke at the Fives Court, or in fact than any of 
us can help losing our temper when we do lose it. 
In him, therefore, we can in some sort excuse it; 
though we would on no account seek to exempt 
him from the consequence which such a weakness 
entails. But perhaps he is the only reckless 
abuser of his day for whom this excuse (such as 
it is) can be made. He vituperates the objects of 
his political hatred in terms that they do not al- 
ways, deserve, because, when that hatred is stirred 
up to its height, he neither knows nor cares for 
the precise value of the terms he uses. But with 
the systematic maligners of the day it is a very dif- 
ferent matter. They do not even murder reputa- 
tion with " malice prepense ;" for they have not 
heart or gall enough to be ' ' haters " at all, much 
less such a " good hater 7 ' as he piques himself on 
being. They commit their moral assassinations 
as the Italian bravos do, — for hire ; and have no 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 197 

more enmity to the person they seek to destroy, 
than they have love to the cause or the party 
they serve. With them it is an affair of pure cal- 
culation, and they sit down to consider of it as 
coolly as they would to a sum in arithmetic. 
Will it pay to poison the public mind against such 
or such a person ? Is he of sufficient importance 
to make it prudent to do so ? Will the reprisals he 
is likely to make leave a balance in favour of our 
party ? These are the kind of questions they ask 
themselves — or when not authorised to act on 
their own judgment, their employers. And if the 
answers are in the affirmative, they next proceed 
to enquire into the actual character, both mental 
and moral, of the person to be put down ; and 
whatever that may be, regulate their attack ac- 
cordingly. For example, if the peculiar charac- 
teristics of his mind happen to be subtlety and 
acuteness, they swear that he is an ass ; if he is 
particularly remarkable for modesty and diffidence 
of deportment, they write him up a bully and a 
Bobadil ; if they should happen to learn (by means 
of their spies) that he never drinks any thing but 
water, they instantly offer to prove that he gets drunk 
every morning upon gin and bitters, and every night 
upon brandy-punch; and so of the rest. Nay, it 
is not without example, when nothing else seemed 



198 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

likely to do, for them to throw out pretty broad 
insinuations, the nature of which cannot even be 
insinuated here ! 

But they have another method, which is a still 
greater favourite with them than any of the 
preceding, and not without reason, for it is in 
some cases more effective than any other. It 
consists in the artillery of nick-names. A nick- 
name is at once irresistible and unanswerable. 
It is a dab of moral mud thrown at a man. If 
thrown skilfully it is sure to stick, and if it sticks 
it is sure to make the bearer of it look ridiculous. 
If the first nobleman or the finest gentleman in 
the land were to walk along London Streets with 
a great dab of mud upon his cheek, the very 
chimney-sweepers would laugh and " point the 
finger " at him as he passed. And precisely so it 
is with a nick-name. There is no gainsaying it. 
It is worse than an " z7/-name ;" and those who 
g>ive it might as well swear away a man's life at 
once, and have him hanged outright. And so they 
would if they dared. 

But these gentry are leading us farther from 
our subject than it is either worth while or decent 
to follow them. What we were about to say was, 
that this kind of warfare is one of those signs 
which mark the Spirit of the Age. Extremes meet ; 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 199 

and we are now arrived at that extreme pitch of 
refinement which merges into barbarism. In 
no other age would the kind of warfare we have 
alluded to been tolerated ; and it is tolerated now, 
only because 

" We have given our hearts away — a sordid boon ;" 

and are pretty much in that moral condition in 
which men are before they have hearts to give. 

Oh, it was not so once ! Alas ! whither are ye 
fled, white years of youth ! Beautiful hopes of 
opening life, why are ye changed to blank mis- 
givings, and base suspicions, and coward fears, 
and constant uncontrollable perturbations, that 
prey upon the pierced spirit like canker-worms, 
and will not let it rest ! It is but a little while, 
and that spirit was wandering like a bird beside 
the ever-sounding sea ; as pure as the air that 
seemed to lift it from the earth ; as clear as the 
waters over which it floated at will, or plunged 
into their green depths in search of unimagined 
wonders; as free and unconfined as the space in 
which it expatiated, or turned by a thought into 
the temple of its triumphant worship ! What and 
where is it now ? A denizen of that world which 
it loathes, yet dares not leave; — -a declaimer in 
favour of that virtue it has forfeited and that sin- 



200 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

cerity it has flung away; — a sophisticate* with 
that truth which it still professes to idolize; — 
and (oh shame of shames ! ) ready to truckle at 
the footstool of that power which it would fain 
see sunk into the central fires of the earth that 
it outrages and pollutes ! 

We shall not detain our readers by any 
lengthened details in regard to works now so well 
known as the characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 
the Lectures on the English Poets, and the Table 
Talk. They are each " of a mingled yarn — good 
and ill" — as what book is not ? each contains nu- 
merous examples of all the faults that we have 
attributed to this writer, and all his good qualities ; 
and all are what they were perhaps intended to be 
more than any thing else, — infinitely entertaining ; 
and the last named — the two volumes of Table 
Talk — are perhaps more so than any other volumes 
of the day. For our own parts we would even go 
the length of making no exception whatever to this 
remark. We do not of course mean to assert that 
people hurry through them with that eager interest 
with which they devour the Scotch Novels ; or that 
a tenth part so many persons look into them at all. 
But those who do read them turn to them ten 
times after the first perusal, for once that they 
turn to the others. And to say nothing of their 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 201 

readers being of the only class worthy that name, 
they are nearly all buyers of them ; which very 
few are indeed of the novels, compared with the 
enormous number that is sold. The chief consu- 
mers of the latter are the circulating libraries, and 
those numerous little lending shops which they 
have created in every large town throughout the 
kingdom. There are circulating libraries in Lon- 
don that are obliged to have from fifty to seventy 
copies of each novel when it comes out. And 
those who actually buy them on their first ap- 
pearance, merely to read, are chiefly those who 
have plenty of money and little patience, and 
therefore chuse to pay a guinea and a half for an 
early perusal. And this includes the additional 
advantage of being able to lend them to friend 
after friend, till they are fairly lost, and you are 
exempted from the task of taking them up again ! 
for delightful as it is the first time, it is felt to be 
a task afterwards. 

But with the Table Talk it is different. The 
real readers of the day are comparatively very 
few. And of these every one is a buyer, to a 
certain extent. There are a few books — one or 
two in a season or so — that they must have. 
Now if the little libraries of these real lovers of 



202 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

books were searched, with a view to ascertain the 
comparative popularity of any given prose writer 
of the day, we would venture odds that Mr. 
Hazlitt would carry it hollow against them all. 
And we would take odds that the Table Talk 
would, like Roderick Random (was it not?) in 
the ten Carlton-house lists of books supposed to 
be the most entertaining in the English language, 
be included in them all ! 

The reader will perceive that, according to this 
calculation, (or speculation, if he pleases) the 
popularity of a book is in an inverse ratio to its 
sale ! But though as a general proposition this 
would be ridiculously untrue, it is nothing less in 
the particular instance in question. Nay — it may 
be added — (and the rationale of the proposition 
may be found in what has been said above) — that 
if the Scotch Novels were read ten times as often 
as they are by the same persons who now read 
them, there would not be half so many of them 
sold. So that the author of them must take 
care what he is about, and not write them too 
well, lest he should get more of the " empty 
praise" of admiration in part payment of his de- 
mands, and less of that " solid pudding" which 
is evidently so much more palatable to him. Not 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 203 

that he needs any hint of this kind from us. 
Indeed he seems to have been acting on this feel- 
ing of late, to a somewhat ominous extreme ! 

We have but little more to say of Mr. Hazlitt, 
and his works. The most remarkable feature of 
his style is, that there is no remarkable feature 
belonging to it. He studiously avoids the use of 
uncommon and obsolete words ; and never uses 
a common word in an uncommon sense. But 
perhaps it would be impossible to give a just 
account of what his style would seem to aim at 
being, without repeating, almost in so many words, 
what he has himself said in describing his notion of 
" The Familiar Style." We must therefore refer 
the reader to that essay, in the second volume of 
Table Talk. How far it is conformable with that 
notion, is another question. In some particular 
instances, and where he has taken pains to make 
it so, (as for example in the Essay itself just re- 
ferred to), we take it to be the very best specimen 
of that style extant; and we agree with him in 
thinking that style the best. But generally 
speaking it falls short of what it aims at being • 
or rather it goes beyond. It is frequently so 
idiomatical as to be quite enigmatical, to all but 
those who are up to the slang of the last quarter 



204 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

of a century. It is sometimes so very " familiar" 
that it " breeds contempt." Its plainness often 
borders on ugliness. In avoiding anything like 
an oratorical construction, it is frequently broken 
into bits. Its periods have no more words than 
some writers have clauses. It is anything but 
long-winded. It seems to be written for persons 
afflicted with asthma. You may read it aloud 
while smoking your cigar; puff and paragraph, 
alternately. Not that we would recommend this 
practice : for though not professors of it ourselves, 
we should conceive that smoking, like painting, 
requires the whole man. 

We should venture to judge that if Mr. 
Hazlitt's choice of the familiar style in the first 
instance was the result of his naturally pure taste, 
he has adhered to it so long on account of the 
facilities it has afforded him ; for, as we before 
hinted, he does not pretend to keep a conscience 
in so purely a matter of business as authorship 
now is with him. On the contrary, whatever 
serves the turn of the moment is welcome. 
Forced conceits and hacknied quotations ; paltry 
points, staring paradoxes, and petty plays on 
words ; scraps of Latin and French picked up 
nobody or everybody knows where ; anthitheses, 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 205 

alliterations, and any other helps and make- 
weights, however unmeaning and meretricious, 
(including the whole family of the Gingles) — ■ 
all are laid under contribution whenever they 
present themselves. He is far from particular : 
if " my lady" is not to be had, he is content with 
" Joan." In short, in this respect, " nought is 
for him too high, and nought too low." 

Again — when he sets himself to make out a 
case, if he cannot do it by fair means he will do 
it by foul ; or he will frequently do whichever is 
easiest, or whichever will tell best. And why 
not? He writes that you may " read;" but not 
that you may " mark, learn, and inwardly di- 
gest." Or, putting it in another point of view, — - 
he cannot afford to give you more than a little of 
the " leaven" of wisdom to each " lump" (" abor- 
tions" he has himself called them) that he pe- 
riodically lays before you ; otherwise what is to 
become of all those which he must produce 
during the next twenty years ? But this does 
not belong to style. 

Mr. Hazlitt's metaphors, figures, and what are 
usually considered as the higher parts of style, 
frequently " come as tardy off" as his language 
and construction. They are very seldom inapt; 
but they run upon one, two, three, or four feet, 



206 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

as it may happen. And no wonder, considering the 
distance from which some of them are fetched. 

So much for the defects of Mr. Hazlitt's style. 
Its merits must not be dwelt upon so long in pro- 
portion, or the rest of the Spirit of the Age 
" must halt for it.'' We will only say that. when 
he is in earnest in his endeavour to develop a 
truth, or anxious in his attempt to disentangle a 
difficulty, or unaffectedly impelled to pour forth 
a burst of passion, or sincerely eager to impress 
an opinion, or deeply interested in establishing a 
theory or illustrating a theme, — there is no one 
like him. Then his power of style is equal to his 
power of thought and penetration, — which are un- 
rivalled. Then he can shoot forth winged words 
like arrows ; each following each to its desti- 
nation, and no one impeding another. Then he 
can link simile to simile, and place figure beside 
figure, and pile metaphor upon metaphor, till 
each illustrates each, and all melt into one mellow 
whole, like the parts of a beautiful picture. Then 
he can make fancy beget fancy, and draw imagi- 
nation from imagination, and support truth against 
truth, and multiply argument into argument, and 
distil sentiment out of sentiment, — till there is 
neither power nor will left in the reader to gainsay 
or resist him. In short, then, and then only, he 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 207 

is that really admirable expounder of truth, and 
detector and destroyer of falsehood, which he might 
always be if he pleased. 

As we have mentioned the conversational powers 
of some other of the subjects of our remarks, it 
would scarcely be fair towards Mr. Hazlitt entirely 
to pass over his. Perhaps if Mr. Coleridge is, 
among professedly literary men, the best talker of 
his day, Mr. Hazlitt is upon the whole the best 
converser ; which is better — for it is calculated to 
give more immediate pleasure to his fellow con- 
versers than ever Mr. C.'s can to his hearers, 
while it is pretty sure to be of more after benefit 
to them. We will venture to say of Mr. Hazlitt's 
conversation, that it includes every one of the good 
qualities of his writings, and not one of their 
faults. And the reasons are simply these : he is 
fond of talking, whereas he hates writing; and 
in talking, he is not called upon to say more than 
he has to say, whereas in writing he frequently 
is — having engaged to fill a certain space on 
a certain topic. In short, he talks with per- 
fect sincerity and good faith ; thinking what- 
ever he says, and saying whatever he thinks. But 
he writes, as it may happen : what he thinks, if he 
thinks that will do ; if not, anything that will. 

We must now take leave of Mr. Hazlitt, and 



208 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

abruptly, for we have long passed our limits. We 
shall do so by saying, that whenever he pleases to 
take the trouble, he may approve himself to all 
the world, what two of the best judges in it have 
already pronounced him — the best prose writer of 
his day, and one of the finest spirits of his age 
and country. # 

* Hear (if you can) Lord Holland's conversation; and see a 
Letter of Mr. Charles Lamb to Mr. Southey, printed some time 
ago in the London Magazine. 



LONDON LETTERS 



COUNTRY COUSINS, 



LONDON LETTERS 

TO 

COUNTRY COUSINS. 
No. 5.* 

THE STREETS OF LONDON BY GAS-LIGHT. 



I intended, my dear Frank, (or rather, my dear 
cousins conjointly — for this epistle is addressed to 
all of you,) to have delayed offering you any gene- 
ral sketches of London in 1825, till I had prepared 
you for their due appreciation, by placing before 
you a few more of its particular features. But as 
I hear from authentic sources, that certain evil 
disposed persons are, at this present writing, en- 
gaged in laying a deep hatched and deadly plot, 
against the very existence of what I had intended 
should form one of the most characteristic and 
attractive of my themes, I must pounce upon it 

* Continued from New Monthly Magazine — p. 132 of the 
Number for August, 1825. 

p 2 



212 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

at once, before it passes into a thing that was ; — 
seeing that it is the very essence of these agreeable 
missives, to make you acquainted with nothing but 
what actually is ; leaving what has been to those 
who have been, and what is to be, to those who 
are not. 

You must know, that it has been the laudable 
practice of the principal London linen-drapers, 
and a few other retail tradesmen, time immemorial, 
(that is to say for these ten years past,) to keep 
open their shops till twelve o'clock at night, — for 
the patriotic purpose, I suppose, of providing at 
once a useful light for the footsteps of the 
passengers through our evening streets, and a 
pleasing delassement for their optics : not to men- 
tion the advantages which these attractive exhibi- 
tions offer to the interests of another very numerous 
class of traders, whose primitive notions induce 
them to carry on their operations in the open air : 
I dare say as many pockets have been picked out- 
side the lighted shops of London, as inside thein. 

There is also another highly useful and agree- 
able result of this practice. I mean the keeping 
at home till bed-time innumerable nuisances — 
parallels to the critical calicots of Paris — who 
would otherwise infest our minor theatres, and 
give a too classical tone to their performances : 



LONDON LETTERS. 213 

for there is no one so fastidious in his tastes as your 
fashionable shop-man. 

But to the plot itself, — for with this anticipated 
effect of it, I have at present little to do; though it 
may become a matter for serious speculation when 
I make you acquainted with our theatres and 
places of public amusement. 

You are to understand, then, that it is in con- 
templation to call a meeting of all the London 
Linen-drapers, to take into consideration the pro- 
priety of shutting up their shops at what they are 
pleased to regard as a reasonable hour. As a 
ground for which measure it is alleged, firstly, 
that good housewives do not make a practice q^ 
corning out to buy linnen-drapery, long after they 
are gone to bed, and consequently, that the last 
two or three hours involve a wasteful expenditure 
of gas and good looks ; and secondly, that linen- 
drapers' shop-men are men as well as their masters, 
(more shame for the said masters ! they ought to 
be women,) and that, •' as such," they should be 
allowed to partake in those needful recreations, 
both of body and mind, which the arduous nature 
of their occupations so obviously demand ; in other 
words, that being employed all day long in the 
labour of lounging over counters, setting forth the 
merits of mull muslins, and expatiating on the 



214 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

pre-eminence of new patterns, they ought to be 
let loose at night to recruit their exhausted powers, 
both physical and intellectual, in those hospitals 
for invalid health and morals, the Royal Saloon, 
the Cyder Cellar, and the half-price pits of the 
Adelphi, Coburg, and Surry theatres. 

I shall not venture to conjecture how far the 
plot in question may prove successful with re- 
ference to the above object; but this I will say, 
that, even if it gains all it seeks, the price paid for 
it will be " a penny all too dear," — seeing that it 
will go nigh to cost our metropolis that one pecu- 
liar feature which distinguishes it favourably 
above all other great cities whatever. If an in- 
habitant of any other capital in the world, great 
or small, were to be driven through the principal 
streets of London for the first time, at nine o'clock 
at night, even in the depth of winter, he would 
enquire what grand fete was going on ; and when 
you told him this was the every night aspect of 
the place, he would give you credit, or perchance 
discredit, for practising upon him that only form of 
joke with which he thinks we solemn English are 
acquainted — -namely, the hoax. 

And this sole redeeming peculiarity in the in- 
ternal economy of our Capital, we are to be de- 
prived of at one blow — this single " Gaiety" in our 



LONDON LETTERS. 215 

huge volume of metropolitan " Gravities " we are 
to see cut out before our faces — in order that cer- 
tain slim apprentices and simpering shop-men 
may have time to sip their tea at sixpenny coffee- 
shops, and then proceed to recreate themselves 
after the intellectual labours of the day, by utter- 
ing enlightened critiques on the merits of the last 
new monkey-piece at the Surry, or espousing the 
cause of some victim of managerial tyranny at the 
Tottenham Court Road, or pronouncing profound 
untruisms on the delicate distinctions which exist 
between the tragedy of Mr. Huntly and Mr. Cob- 
ham at the Coburg ! 

The truth is, I suspect that the managers of 
these major of the minors are the bottom of this 
worse than gunpowder plot ; and as there is no 
knowing what their influence may bring about, 
when aided by all the eloquence of all the junior 
Waithmans, (who are said to be at the top of it,) 
I have determined to lose no time in chaperoning 
you through the gas-lighted streets of London, 
while we can still find something in them to dis- 
tinguish one from another : for pleasant as they 
are when their shops are opened, and give to each 
of them a distinct and noticeable character, — when 
they are shut up, their total want of architectural 



216 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

merit makes it merely like walking through inter- 
minable lines of gas-lighted brick-kilns. 

We will, if you please, commence our perambu- 
lation at a point which it is the more necessary 
you should see now in imagination, inasmuch as 
it is one which, I suspect, your somewhat exclu- 
sive notions touching the limits of visitable locali- 
ties will lead you to avoid when you come among 

us. Lady M h alleges, — as an excuse for not 

visiting her stately friend, the M ue, who dares 

to live in Bedford Square, — that nothing can pre- 
vail upon her horses to pass to the north of Oxford 
Street. And I'm inclined to think your horses 
will very soon acquire a similar distaste towards 
certain quarters. This at least I am sure of, that 
two or three of the families with whom you will 
be most intimate, will do their possible to per- 
suade you of the absolute impracticability of Lud- 
gate Hill, beyond that precise point occupied by 
the far-famed emporium of Messrs Rundell and 
Bridge, and will assure you that no instance ever 
came within their experience of any known per- 
son having penetrated farther. 

The spot from wdience we are to start, on our 
evening tour in search of the London picturesque, 
shall be that where the Poultry abuts upon Corn- 



LONDON LETTERS. 217 

hill; for even I, who am by no means fastidious 
as to the particular latitude in which I let myself 
be seen, will not pretend to have penetrated far- 
ther towards the East Pole than the immediate 
purlieus of this point, where the Prince of the 
City gives his annual dinners. Not but I believe 
the passage to be practicable ; and indeed I have 
some thoughts of exploring it myself, as far as 
certain points which have been discovered by 
Grimm's Ghost, (of course you read the New 
Monthly,) and by him denominated Crutched Friars 
and Saint Mary Axe. And if I do so, I shall cer- 
tainly imitate the example of our equally adven- 
turous northern explorers, and affix new names to 
certain noticeable spots. Indeed, I do not know 
that I can do better than adopt the identical ones 
chosen by those modern Columbuses. If not quite 
so flattering, they will be to the full as appropriate. 
What, for instance, can be better than to call the 
little narrow defile which flanks the great monu- 
ment and mausoleum of our national wealth, the 
Bank, Baring's Straits ; that spot about the 
'Change where innumerable apple-women congre- 
gate, Barrow's Point ; and that other, where the 
losing gamesters of the Alley first issue forth to 
utter their angry bewailings, Croaker's Sound ? 
But this, by the bye. 



218 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

You are to understand, then, that we begin our 
walk at the Mansion House ; — turning our eyes 
eastward before we set off, and casting up a glance, 
first, on our right, at that gloomy monument of city 
grandeur, which has been smoked till it looks as 
black upon all around it as the pots in its own far- 
famed kitchen ; but is, nevertheless, not without a 
certain air of dingy dignity, which would be less 
exceptionable than it is, if the building were not 
perched up above its natural position, by means of 
certain mysterious arches, which run beneath it 
like the vaults of a church, and the darkness of 
which is made visible, all day long even, by a 
single sepulchral lamp hanging at the extreme end. 

In a line with the face of this really fine build- 
ing runs that principal vein in the mine of our 
London wealth, Lombard Street: so denominated, 
in courtesy, I suppose, to Sir William Curtis ; that 
most lumbering of all the Lombards : — for any- 
where else it would be called a lane. It is, in 
fact, at present, not wide enough to admit 
two ordinary aldermen abreast; and I under- 
stand that Sir William himself has it in serious 
contemplation to move next Session for leave 
to bring in a bill for widening it ; as he alleges 
that at present he cannot pass up it, in his way to 
his banking house of a mornino* without the 



LONDON LETTERS. 219 

eminent danger of crushing some of his own clerks 
against the walls. I am told, too, that consider- 
ing the buildings of Lombard Street are of brick, 
and not of wood, he intends to throw out a hint, 
for the better judgment of the House, as to whether 
it might not be an improvement on the usual 
method, if they were to grant him leave to bring 
in a pickaxe instead of a bill. 

The other creeks that pour their ever-running 
streams westward at this point, and form a con- 
fluence into the rapid river of Cheapside, are, to 
the left of Lombard Street, Cornhill, the resort of 
Lucky Lottery office keepers, Stationers, and 
Stage-coaches ; — to the left of that, the space 
behind Bank Buildings, which is used chiefly 
by Mr. Soane, as a sort of public exhibition-room 
for the display of his taste in manufacturing 
pillars of that particular order which are intend- 
ed to support only themselves, and have capitals 
that are anything but capital ; — and finally, to the 
left of this, with the chef-d'oeuvre of the above- 
named tomb-builder between, is the little street, 
or rather strait, which I have alluded to before, and 
which has an unaccountable air of melancholy 
about it, that even the endless jokes of the end- 
less Paddington-stage-coachmen who have lately 
been quartered upon it, are unable to dispel. 



220 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

The whole of this purlieu, on which, in virtue of 
our politeness, we are now about so un politely to 
turn our backs, would, unless I am greatly misin- 
formed by a city friend who is not ashamed to 
own a familiarity with it, afford food for a very 
instructive epistle ; and it is by no means impossible 
that I may hereafter fulfil my already-hinted-at 
intention of exploring it with this view. But at 
present we must follow the example of the love- 
sick lady in Burns 's song, and " keep looking to 
the west" all the rest of the evening; especially 
as it is only by day-light, and at a particular hour, 
that the district we are leaving behind us can be 
seen to proper disadvantage. 

If we shall, in the course of our evening pilgri- 
mage, pass through several scenes more striking 
than this of Cheapside, or more picturesque from 
their scite and style of building, or more brilliant 
from the boundless expense bestowed on the em- 
bellishment of particular portions of them, — we 
shall meet with none that is upon the whole so 
gay, spirit-stirring, and full to overflowing of 
variety and life. In almost all the principal 
streets except Cheapside, if we meet with here and 
there a shop whose splendours put to shame even 
its splendid neighbours, we shall also meet with 
here and there one whose comparative poverty 



LONDON LETTERS. 221 

makes us wonder how it can possibly afford to 
keep such company. But in Cheapside there is 
no such disagreeable dissimilarity. Each seems 
determined to shine equally with its neighbours, 
and none is ambitious of o?/£-shining them. 

In fact, the housewives east of the Mansion 
House repair to Cheapside, as to a sort of general 
mart for whatever they may want under ordinary 
circumstances, — without determining beforehand at 
what particular shop they intend to make their 
purchase. Whereas, the inhabitants of all other 
districts of the metropolis go direct to so-and-so 
house, or to such-a-one's shop; and they find 
themselves on Ludgate Hill, or in Piccadilly, or 
Oxford Street, because the favourite emporium 
happens to be situated there. 

Which practice is the wiser of the two, is a mys- 
tery into which it is not my present pleasure to pene- 
trate. It is quite sufficient for me that the former 
has made Cheapside the most lively, various, and 
amusing street in all London, taking length for 
length; unless, indeed, you should say that I am 
putting the effect for the cause, and that it is the 
street which has made the practice, not the prac- 
tice the street. This point I promise to argue 
with you when we meet, and to prove, to the entire 



222 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

dis-satisfaction of each of you, that you are each 
wrong, whichever side of the argument you may 
espouse. In the mean time, let us proceed in our 
walk; or rather let us begin it ; — for to my want of 
shame be it spoken — (and I fear to the sad discomfi- 
ture of the worthy governor's patience,) I have 
not yet led you a single step on your way. 

Passing on, then, to the western extremity of 
Cornhill, where Cheapside nominally begins, we 
shall find that the coup-d'ceil of this latter is by no 
means striking, even now by gas-light ; for though 
it is brighter than almost any other part of Lon- 
don, the private lights are so intermixed with the 
public ones, that all regularity of appearance is 
destroyed, and with it all istinct and uniform effect. 
Not but what the converging lines of parish gas, 
with the fourfold one which terminates them in 
the centre of the street, may easily be traced by 
an eye practised in this terrestrial astronomy ; just 
as an accomplished star-gazer can trace the con- 
stellations amidst the seeming confusion of the 
heavens. The light from the shops, too, at this 
early hour, when they are all open, eclipses all 
the diffused light of the lamps, and you see them 
by their form merely, — just as you see the planets 
and other larger stars, when there is a bright 



LONDON LETTERS. 223 

moon in the sky. This uniform confusion of 
lights is also scarcely at all varied, as it is in 
most other streets, by remarkably conspicuous 
points, on which the eye is as it were compelled 
to rest, whether it will or no. It is not the 
fashion here, as it is elsewhere, to insist on being 
known as the proprietor of a lamp as big as a 
light-house. 

Neither can I, as before hinted, introduce you 
to many very conspicuous shops in this street, 
either for the surpassing splendour of their em- 
bellishments, or the richness of their wares. There 
is one, however, which cannot be passed by with- 
out notice ; since it is perhaps the handsomest 
house of retail business in all London. This is 
Mr. Tegg's new emporium for everything con- 
nected with writing and reading, — from the New 
London Encyclopaedia of all Sciences, Arts, and 
Knowledge, down to the sixpenny bottle of ink, the 
penny-worth of wafers, and the ream of " out- 
sides," by the aid of which the forthcoming number 
of it will in all probability be put together. 

There is a keeping in the character of Mr. Tegg's 
shop, which I admire in all things. It is as inter- 
minable as some of the new-old works which he has 
begun to issue from it " in numbers'' — and the above- 
named more than any perhaps : like that, you 



224 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

cannot see to the end of it. It is however a noble 
place ; and the outside of it is worthy the in — 
being of richly carved stone from top to bottom, 
and built (and I believe it was inhabited) by Sir 
Christopher Wren. 

Extremes meet, in more senses than we are apt 
to believe, or willing to admit. Perhaps if it 
were asked, at any given time, which of all the 
merely thriving, but still unnoticed and unknown 
inhabitants of any given city or district, is most 
likely to outstrip all his competitors, and reach to 
the head of his class, the prophet who pitched upon 
the poorest and least externally promising, would be 
nearest to the truth of the event. Mr. H — of Syd- 
ney's Alley, is beyond comparison the richest shop- 
keeper in all London ; and they tell me it was but 
the other day (some twenty years ago) that he kept 
a six-penny stick shop on the very spot where he 
has since contrived to accumulate a mine of wealth. 
And Mr. Tegg, whose splended emporium has 
just gained him the honour of an introduction to 
your acquaintance, I myself remember, only two 
or three years ago, as the master of a little shop 
over the way, the back part of which (a sort of 
cabin about six feet square, which, from its heat 
and crowd during its hours of business, might 
have been inaptly enough termed the black hole 



LONDON LETTERS. 225 

of Cheapside) he used to devote to the purposes 
of an evening mock auction, for the sale of cheap 
editions of popular works, to stray apprentices 
" of a literary turn," who happened to be passing 
by on their errands ; while his lady was selling 
the same works in the front shop, for fifty per 
cent, more, or less, according to the more or less 
sanguine temperament of the body of bidders 
who happened to be collected behind. So much 
for philosophy and scandal. Now to our walk 
again . 

On reaching the western extremity of Cheap- 
side we shall of course deploy to the left a little, — 
leaving the endless, and as it should seem, eternal 
scaffoldings of the (intended) New Post Office on 
our right, and not even condescending to cast a 
single glance down the dreary defile of Pater- 
noster Row, — that dark domain of the Booksellers, 
from which issue forth (like the Winds from the 
black cave of Eolus) those winged messengers of 
the national mind which make their way to the four 
quarters of the Globe. 

Saint Paul's Church Yard, upon which we 
emerge immediately on quitting Cheapside, un- 
doubtedly bears away the bell, in point of liveli- 
ness, from all other existing burying-grounds — 
not excepting that of Pere la Chaise itself, at 

Q 



226 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Paris. At least such is the case with respect to 
the northern side of it, along which we are now 
to pass. As for the opposite side, that bears ex- 
actly the same resemblance to its gay counterpart, 
as the dead half of the Lady of Fashion does to 
the living one, in that edifying print which, when 
I was a boy, (you smile, as if you thought me one 
still ! ) used to attract sucK solemn attention from 

" The white upturned eyes, 
Of wondering mortals that fell back to gaze on it," 

as it hung against the centre pane of Mr. Bowles's 
print shop farther on. 

Let us, however, not pass a step forward on 
our way, till we have looked up at the Cathedral, 
which here rises before us, like the shadow of 
some great mountain. 

To use the favourite phrase of a certain assem- 
bly when the orator who is " in possession of 
the house" is about to advance what he feels to 
be a very questionable proposition, — "I have no 
hesitation in saying" that St. Paul's Cathedral 
can never be seen to so much advantage, in point 
of general effect, as at this time of the evening, 
when it cannot be seen at all! In the day time 
we can see just enough of this unrivalled temple — 
for you may take my word that it is unrivalled, 



LONDON LETTERS. 227 

even by Saint Peter's at Rome — to discover that 
it might just as well be at Rome, keeping Saint 
Peter's company, for any general impression that 
we can receive from it as a whole, — in conse- 
quence of the horrible manner in which the 
houses are crowded around it, almost up to its 
very doors on every side. In fact, whatever the 
worthy governor may hint to the contrary, I am 
not starting an idle paradox, but stating a simple 
truth, when I say, that by day-light Saint Paul's 
is invisible. It is physically impossible to see 
it — just as much as if it were out of sight ;— be- 
cause, to see any given object, the laws of optics 
absolutely require that the eye should be placed 
at such a distance as will permit the rays of light 
to enter it from every point of the outiine ; and 
this distance, in the case of Saint Paul's, is at 
least twenty times as great as any at which you 
can place yourself. Consequently, you can no • 
more see Saint Paul's when you are walking in 
Saint Paul's Church Yard, than you can see 
Mont Blanc when you are climbing up the side 
of it. But now, when the whole air immedi- 
ately about you is in a blaze of light, from the 
gas and the shops, you do better than see, you 
feel it ; for, as the effect of the lights reaches 
to a comparatively small distance they do not in the 

Q2 



228 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

least degree illumine the building, but only make 
it show more black by the contrast : so that it 
seems to stand lowering down upon you, like one 
of the enormous living shadows in Milton, or 
" Like Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom." 
Saint Paul's Church Yard is to the city what 
the Burlington Arcade, which we shall visit by 
and by, is to the West-End — a sort of mart for 
fancy matters, when the good citizens have a 
mind to be more than ordinarily generous, and 
pay more for a thing than they think it's worth. 
This is the greatest thoroughfare for pedestrians 
in all the city; as it collects all that are going 
westward, from both sides of Cheapside. The 
consequence of this is, that the shops pay higher 
rents than anywhere else ; and the consequence of 
this is, that they ask higher prices and profits ; 
and the consequence of this is, that, in order to 
get them, they make a smarter external shew than 
they otherwise need do ; and the consequence of 
this is, that they attend more to what their wares 
look than what they are ; and the consequence of 
this is, that Saint Paul's Church Yard is, without 
exception, the prettiest place in all the city in 
which to spend money that you don't know what 
to do with upon things that you don't want. 
You are to understand, too, that Saint Paul's 



LONDON LETTERS. 229 

Church Yard is a spot belonging exclusively to 
the City, — the very circumstance which makes its 
fortune with the inhabitants of that, (namely, its 
being no thoroughfare for carriages), altogether 
precluding it from the patronage of any but pe- 
destrian purchasers. As it cannot boast any shops 
claiming particular mention to the disparagement 
of their fellows, we will pass on to Ludgate Hill. 

On reaching the top of Ludgate Hill, we stand 
on a spot which will not be absolutely interdicted, 
to the lady part of the circle for whose edification 
these epistles are indited ; for those persons who 
set the fashions are not such fools as those who 
cannot afford to follow them would insinuate ; 
but, on the contrary, know when they are well 
served better than their inferiors. It does not fol- 
low, from this, that a good shop shall be a fashion- 
able one ; but it does follow that a fashionable 
one is invariably a good one, and at least as cheap 
as a hundred worse. Now Ludgate Hill can 
boast three or four shops that are fashionable, 
even among fashionable people ; so that it must 
not be treated as a place absolutely unknown even 
in the western world. I believe Mr. Everington's 
show of India shawls really is matchless, not- 
withstanding his advertisements declare as much. 
Ellis's depot for " everything in the world" of Ha- 



230 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

berdashery is unrivalled, for united cheapness and 
goodness. And all the first- rate jewellers and silver- 
smiths in London inhabit Ludgate Hill, and have 
done for this hundred years past, in the single 
establishment of Messrs. llundell and Bridge. 

For a street which is gifted with two sides of 
the way, (and there are very few of the principal 
ones in this enviable predicament), Ludgate Hill 
is the most popular and populous in all London. 
At whatever time you visit it — morning, noon, 
night, and all night long — it is everywhere alive 
with busy faces, and its houses are shaking to 
their very foundations with the rattle of innu- 
merable wheels. But at the time we are passing 
down it — just at night-fall, when the lamps are 
lighted, and the shops are none of them shut — it 
is more bright and busy than any other, or than 
itself at any other time. It is, however, a street 
of business merely, and nobody ever sets foot in 
it that can keep away : which I think shews a 
singular want of taste : for those who cannot find 
an hour's amusement in the mere shops of Lud- 
gate Hill, will look in vain for it elsewhere. 

The view from the upper end is not striking ; for 
the street takes a bend about half way down ; and 
though brilliantly lighted with public lamps, the 
private ones so intermix with them, that all regula- 



LONDON LETTERS. 231 

rity is destroyed. But in detail Ludg'ate Hill more 
than makes up for its deficiencies of general effect. 
The shops are all good without exception ; which 
is not true of any of the streets farther westward. 
And some of them are unrivalled. There is no- 
thing in London equal to Everington's India ware- 
house — nowhere else so much expence incurred, 
with so little mere empty display of it. The two 
great arched windows, each consisting of only 
four immense plates of glass held together by 
almost invisible polished brass frames, introduce 
the eye to vistas which seem almost interminable, 
from the ever multiplying mirrors with which the 
whole interior of the shop is lined. The principal 
lights, too, are so placed, in the centre of each 
window, that they shall break the vacancy with- 
out destroying the extent of the view. They con- 
sist of several gas-burners, placed in a sort of 
Chinese pagoda or temple, composed of richly cut 
glass ; without any brass or other ornaments to 
take off the lightness and brilliancy of the effect. 
These are placed over the counter in the centre of 
each window ; and there is another depending 
from the ceiling, in the centre of the shop : so 
that, when lighted, the place is tenfold more 
brilliant than during the brightest sunshine. The 
floor is covered with rich Brussells carpetting ■ 



232 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

every part of the walls, from floor to ceiling, and 
the whole of the ceiling itself is entirely covered 
with looking-glass ; and the articles placed in the 
windows are so few, and are hung in such drapery- 
like fashion, that, aided by the great Indian jars 
which are generally displayed among them, the 
whole looks, from without, like a splendid drawing- 
room lighted up for a party, or a fairy scene in 
an oriental melo-drama. 

To this general approval, however, of Mr. 
Everington's taste, I must put in one exception, in 
justice to my own. I do not object to his em- 
ploying a plate-glass multiplication-table for the 
purpose of increasing, ad infinitum, his shawls 
and his shopmen j but I cannot approve of that 
part of the arrangement which prevents his fair 
customers from judging whether the latter stand 
upon their heads or their heels. 

There are three or four other shops in the same 
trade, close to the above on either side, that do 
their best to rival the one which first set them an 
example of expensive embellishment. But though 
they display as much light, and ten times more 
gilding, they fall short of their rival in tasty rich- 
ness of effect. They, however, surpass it in the 
variety and beauty of the objects they offer to the 
mere passing eye — the other merely indicating its 



LONDON LETTERS. 233 

calling, by the display of a few elegant nonde- 
scripts in the shape of shawls. 

I wish this had been your season for coming 
among us ; and as you would never guess the rea- 
son why I wish so, I must tell you ; — it is this, — that 
you will never have such another opportunity of ad- 
miring the genius (for they have displayed nothing 
less) of our English pattern-drawers. The win- 
dows of the linen-draper's shops have this season 
been at least as w T ell worth looking at, for the 
" works of art" they have displayed, as the R. A.'s 
exhibition was. 

I'm not joking, I assure you, nor even exag- 
gerating, according to my own feelings of the 
matter. I do not think anything so beautiful in 
its way was ever before invented, as the patterns 
of the morning dresses of this season have been : 
and I pique myself on being something of a con- 
noisseur in these matters. The prevailing trait of 
them has been, brilliance and variety of colours — 
chiefly the primitive, or rainbow colours — and 
often all these united in one pattern. But the 
effect produced in many cases has been what I 
could not have thought possible — a species of op- 
tical illusion, produced by printing one pattern 
over another, and sometimes two — so as to give 
the impression of seeing one through the other. 



234 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

But if these beautiful things have not yet 
penetrated to your remote regions, you must e'en 
suspend any notion you wish to form of them till 
they do ; for one of their chief merits is that they 
must ever remain nondescript. 

In the mean time, let me offer your imagination 
my arm, and let us proceed towards Fleet Street ; 
for I feel that I am keeping you a most uncon- 
scionable time here in the very heart of the city. 
But as you will probably never condescend to 
visit that spot in any other vehicle than the pre- 
sent, perhaps you will forgive me. We must, 
however, not quit Ludgate Hill, (the Bond Street 
of the city,) without observing that what was 
lately its most distinguishing feature, is now un- 
dergoing a change which I cannot but think is 
anything but an appropriate one ; though I ex- 
pect few will agree with me in this opinion. 
You must know that Rundell and Bridge (you 
have heard of them, I suppose, even in Yorkshire) 
have hitherto seemed to pride themselves on own- 
ing the most ugly, old-fashioned, and ill-con- 
ditioned domicile in all the city— so far as ex- 
ternal appearance goes. And for my part, I 
always used to think there was something high in 
this — that it indicated a fine, bold-faced plebae- 
anism, to make ail the Nobles of the land, up to 



LONDON LETTERS. 235 

Royalty itself, after passing through the purgatory 
of the Strand and Fleet Street to arrive at their 
emporium, find the entrance to it less gainly — 
less prepared and adorned for their reception — 
than that of the trunk-maker higher up, or the 
tin-shop lower down, — which were never destined 
to be entered by any personages more exalted in 
rank than a stockbroker's valet, or an alderman's 
housekeeper. To make " the nobility and gentry' 7 
come into the City at all, was bad, or rather good 
enough, I used to think ; but to see their splendid 
equipages — a dozen or a score at a time — -standing 
about the door of the shabbiest looking shop in it — 
was better. It seemed as much as to say, you need 
us, more than we need you, and we'll let you 
know it. But besides this purse-proud display of 
a London citizen's amour-propre, I used to think 
there was something characteristic and appro- 
priate in the entrance to these modern mines of 
Galconda being, like the entrance to all other 
mines, dark, gloomy, and forbidding ; to say 
nothing of its affording a politic contrast to the 
blaze of splendour which greets you on getting 
within. 

But alas ! all my profound speculations on this 
matter were the other day, as I was passing by, 
buried in a moment, beneath a shower of bricks 



236 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

and mortar that came tumbling down about the 
ears of my friends the two golden salmon that used 
to stand sentries over the old-fashioned door-way, 
and that I can remember as a sort of city land- 
mark as long as I can remember the City itself. 
And I have now been obliged to come to the sorry 
conclusion, that avarice was the only ambition of 
these modern Croesuses, and that it was not till 
each partner in the firm could reckon his wealth 
by millions, that they would permit themselves to 
be seduced, by the examples of their neighbours 
and the warnings of their surveyor, into the heart- 
and-purse-rending extravagance of laying out a 
few thousands merely to accommodate their cus- 
tomers, and without having anything more sterling 
to show for it than bricks and mortar. 

That this was the feeling which preserved the 
old entrance so long, and not the one which I had 
foolishly enough fancied, is clear; for now that 
they have made up their minds to demolish it, in- 
stead of supplying its place by a plain, unpretend- 
ing, old-fashioned erection, such as my first theory 
would have required, they have run up the most 
" A/g-^-fantastical " affair in all the town, and one 
that, for a certain tasty want of taste, is not to be 
surpassed even in Regent Street itself. 

On passing from Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, — 



LONDON LETTERS. 237 

which is a continuation of it on a gentle rise to the 
west, as the former is to the east, — we traverse the 
north end of Bridge Street, which is terminated at 
the opposite end by Blackfriars Bridge. This is 
the best street in the City, and has less than any, 
that perfectly city air which belongs to all the others. 
It is the Pall Mall of the City ; consisting, like that, 
chiefly of private houses — private in appearance, 
but most of them used for purposes of trade. We 
will not pass down it, but merely glance at the 
double converging line of brilliant lamps, uniting 
at the end with the ascending, and then descend- 
ing arch of them which is formed by the rise and 
fall of the Bridge. 

The execrable line of sheds which face the end 
of this street, — continuing in the same line all the 
way to Holborn, and called Fleet Market, — we will 
not glance at; because they would disgrace the 
Capital of the Caribbee Indians, — not to mention 
the Capital of the World. 

Before quitting this spot, let me say that there 
is no other so well adapted for observing that 
finest and most characteristic among all our me- 
tropolitan phenomena, a genuine London Fog. To 
stand opposite the Obelisk at the head of Bridge 
Street, when one of these far-famed fogs is coming 
on, and look eastward up Ludgate Hill to Saint 



238 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

Paul's,— which is perhaps just distinguishable in 
the distance, like a deeper shadow seen through a 
less deep one ; — westward, up the winding defile 
of Fleet Street; — southward, along Bridge Street, 
where the thickening mass comes rolling up from 
the Thames, cloud over cloud, each gleaming with 
the light of the gas ; — and northward, down the 
long line of demoniacal looking dens of Fleet 
Market, where the flaring oil lamps of the stall 
keepers seem to struggle with the overwhelming 
gloom; — this, I say, is a sight worth coming all 
the way from Yorkshire to see, and very likely to 
drive you all the way back again when seen. 

Fleet Street and the Strand form, for a strait 
street, the most crooked one we have. It runs a 
mile due east and west, and yet at no one point does 
it present a coup-d'ceil worth standing still to 
dwell upon. They manage these things better 
everywhere else, it must be confessed. True, few 
other cities can boast of such a street as this. But 
those which have one contrive to make the most of 
it ; while we, somehow or other, seem to set our 
wits to work to make the very least of it. Here 
is, for its length, the most busy, populous, and 
lively street in the world, perhaps. And yet you 
can make nothing whatever of it as a single thing 
— can get no great and general effect from any 



LONDON LETTERS. 239 

portion of it ; but are compelled to examine it, if 
at all, in mere detail, as a whole parcel of short 
streets, strung together as if by accident. Its 
best quality is its infinite variety. Being the only 
direct passage from the West End of the town to 
the City, it is the most populous thoroughfare of 
London. Consequently, it is the favourite resort 
of adventurers in every class of trade, in distinc- 
tion from those who have already established 
themselves, or whose particular calling does not 
depend on mere chance patronage. It is the fa- 
vourite spot for the coup-d'essai of young begin- 
ners, who fancy that nothing is to be done except 
in the midst of a perpetual noise and bustle. But 
they soon find it the Purgatory in which they are 
destined to remain, to qualify themselves for those 
Elysian fields of all London shopkeepers, Bond 
Street and Regent Street. 

The consequence of all this is, that the whole of 
Fleet Street and the Strand does not contain 
a single favourite shop. In all my shopping 
chaperonings, I do not remember to have leant 
against the door-post, or stood with my back to 
the fire-place, or sat half on half off that anomaly 
in household furniture, the shop-chair, of a single 
house in this whole line of street. In short, it is 
altogether ungenteel to buy anything in Fleet Street 



240 REJECTED APwTICLES. 

or the Strand, and nobody does it but those two 
numerous classes of persons, who know no better, 
and who cannot help themselves, — including in the 
former class Country Cousins from the eastern coun- 
ties, who are determined to get far enough westward, 
even if it costs them a lodging in Norfolk Street ; 
and in the latter class all those improvident per- 
sons who purchase what they want, not when 
they want it, but when they happen to see it 
before their eyes ; and as this is likely to happen 
oftener in this line of street than in any other, it 
is here that they oftenest buy. In fact, the shop- 
keepers of Fleet Street and the Strand depend 
entirely on chance ; and I dare say few of them 
expect, and not many of them wish, ever to see a 
customer a second time. 

As the constant life and bustle of this line 
of street, and its ceaseless din of coaches and 
carts, require an exclusively metropolitan taste to 
appreciate them, I shall take it for granted that 
they will present no great attractions to you, and 
shall therefore not detain you much longer in the 
midst of them; merely pointing out a few of the 
noticeable spots as we pass quickly along. And 
first let me place you before the new opening a 
little way up on the left, in Fleet Street, which 
has lately been made by a great fire. 



LONDON LETTERS. 



241 



The rage for improvement in the present day 
has amounted to a pitch nothing short of 
romantic ; for it has actually impelled the citizens 
of London, in Common Council assembled, to lay 
their heads and purses together for the purpose of 
sacrificing some fifty feet of the frontage of Fleet 
Street, in order to gain — what, do you suppose ? — a 
shorter cut to the 'Change ? or a grand opening 
to some new Bazaar ? or an imposing approach to 
some " eminent " Assurance office ? No — nothing 
of all this, nor nothing like it ; but merely a view 
of the handsome spire of St. Bride's Church ! 

Oh ! that some patriotic incendiary, now that 
the good citizens are in the humour for taking 
advantage of happy accidents of this nature, 
would contrive to set fire to both sides of St. Paul's 
Church Yard, and burn to the ground every 
thing it contains, outside the railing — not except- 
ing the new front of St. Paul's School ! We 
should then have some chance of seeing for our- 
selves, and showing to others, what would, if we 
could see and show it, be the boast of our island, 
but is now little better than its disgrace, — since we 
are content to sacrifice it to a few paltry shops. 
I suppose there never was such a blunder com- 
mitted, by a people that pretends to know the 
value of money, as to lay out several millions of 

R 



242 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

it upon a building which is professedly erected 
purely to be looked at, but which nobody can see 
any more than if it were not there. Truly, the 
English are not " the most thinking people in the 
world," after all. 

But we are wandering and standing still at the 
same time. Let us pass on, — merely observing, 
that from the commencement of Fleet Street may 
be best seen, in both directions, that fine and pe- 
culiarly characteristic effect which is never absent 
from our evening streets in this part of the town. 
I mean the gradually immersing of the farther end 
of every vista into that dun, dusky distance — that 
" palpable obscure" — which is infinitely more ap- 
propriate to a great city than the airy lightsome- 
ness which some of them so foolishly affect. In 
moving along through the principal streets of the 
city part of London, on a thoroughly dark Decem- 
ber evening, you can scarcely help fancying your- 
self traversing the illuminated galleries of a vast 
Mine, or of some city built beneath another city. 
And this is just as it should be. 

There is nothing to delay us any longer in 
Fleet Street; for it does not contain a single 
noticeable shop, nor is there* a single street branch- 
ing off from it that presents the appearance of any- 
thing better than an accidental gap caused by the 



LONDON LETTERS, 243 

separation of the walls. In fact, it is the mere 
pave and trottoir of Fleet Street which constitute 
its merits. Just before passing out, however, 
through Temple Bar, we may, or rather we must 
observe the great lumbering clock of St. Dimstan's 
church, sticking out upon the end of a square beam, 
over the heads of Hackney-coachmen, into the 
middle of the street, and insisting on telling us what 
time it is, whether we will or no : which, in any 
clock but one belonging to a church, would be an 
impertinence. 

On passing through Temple Bar, we emerge 
upon a scene which more than loses in charac- 
teristic effect, what it gains in openness and 
variety. In fact, the whole of the Strand is a 
sort of " debateable ground," not belonging to or 
partaking the character of either the city or the west 
end ; and I shall therefore, not detain you in it 
any longer than to say, that I have nothing either 
very pleasant or very particular to say about it. 
Fancy yourselves, at once therefore, at Charing 
Cross; and then fancy, if you can, (which you 
cannot,) the fine prospect that here opens upon you 
on all sides. 

Leaving you to enjoy this prospective prospect 
for a post or two, I must, as usual, break off 
in the centre of my subject : for I perceive, what 

r 2 



244 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

you I dare say perceived some half letter ago, — 
that my epistle has already reached a most unread- 
able length. Adieu for a day or two. — Your loving- 
cousin to command, 

Terence Templeton. 



THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

I have for a long time thought that the spot, 
on which I left you standing, at the close of my 
last epistle, is the finest, because the most charac- 
teristic part of all London — that from which you 
get the most various and extensive coup-d'ceil, 
and the one which is at the same time most 
imbued with the spirit and genius of a London 
view. Looking eastward, you have the gloomy 
defile of the Strand, thick w 7 ith smoke, thronged 
and thundering with carriages of every kind, and 
all alive, like the entrance of a bee-hive, with 
ever-busy people passing hither and thither " as 
though they would never grow tired." 

Turning to the south, we look down what is now, 
without exception, the finest street in London ; 
that to which I would, sooner than to any one 
other, direct the attention of a foreigner; — Regent 
Street, Portland Place, and Piccadillv neverthe- 



LONDON LETTERS. 245 

less, notwithstanding. True, Parliament Street 
wants the flashy newness of the first of these, 
the imposing uniformity of the second, and the 
(now that the old gate is removed) literally end- 
less extent of the last. But on the other hand, 
it has the noble width of the widest of these ; the 
constant bustle and traffic of the most populous ; 
and, mixed with some indifferent houses that serve 
as a contrast, several of our best and most striking 
public buildings — which are so arranged as to give 
it an air of grandeur that no other street or place 
in London possesses. 

When buildings are joined to each other, — as 
the private dwellings are, all through the rest of 
London, as well as the public edifices that blend 
with them, — of whatever character they may be 
individually, a want of consistency and uniformity 
takes away from them all unity as well as gran- 
deur of general effect. But when they are de- 
tached, however near together, the case is entirely 
different. Then, each, however dissimilar from 
its neighbour, produces its own immediate effect 
on the spectator's mind, and at the same time 
conduces to a certain general effect which is in fact 
the amount of all the individual ones. 

Now the public buildings in this fine street 
may be considered as detached ; and though, with 



246 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

the exception of White Hall, none of them are 
buildings which can, individually, excite much 
admiration in those who look for something more 
than a mere piling up of stone upon stone, yet all 
taken together produce a better impression than 
any other collection of equal extent that we can 
shew. Those noble private residences, too, on the 
left side of this street, which recede considerably, 
and have groves of trees and open courts before 
them, add to this effect in a very marked manner, 
by giving that comparative spaciousness the want 
of which so sadly destroys everything like gran- 
deur in our metropolis. This latter effect, too, 
has lately been increased, by the whole pavement 
of this street having been Macadamized : — which 
phrase, being interpreted, merely signifies that the 
whole has been changed from pavement to road; 
and that particular kind of road which, when in 
proper order, returns no grating, gravelly sound, 
but over which the carriages bowl along as if the 
tires of their wheels were made of felt. Nothing- 
can be finer than the effect of this on a wide, 
populous, and busy thoroughfare like Parliament 
Street. It not only adds an apparent width to 
the street, but the carriages bowl over it so 
smoothly and silently, that the scene produces, at 
a little distance, the united effect of an actual 



LONDON LETTEBS. 247 

scene, and of a sort of animated panorama of 
the same, executed on a scale " as large as life." 

You are to understand, by the bye, that in the 
above, I am not taking you through Parliament 
Street, but merely bidding you look down it in 
imagination : for it is a street that can be seen to 
advantage by day-light alone ; being almost en- 
tirely without shops, and therefore with little light 
but that furnished by the double row of gas-lamps 
which sweep down its slight descent. 

Looking north-westward, or to the right, from 
the spot on which I have placed you, the coup- 
d'ceil is still fine, though not equal to that portion 
we have just turned from. It consists of irre- 
gular masses of building, separated by several 
wide openings, the chief of which lead away to 
the more fashionable parts — the real West-end of, 
the town. As we can only see these to advan- 
tage a little farther on, we will proceed onward, 
through Cockspur Street. 

This, like most of the other principal thorough- 
fares, has but one side of the way : though this 
has it literally ; — the other side of the road being 
without a continuous pathway, on account of 
the carriage approaches to the various splendid 
Club-houses which have lately been erected in this 
immediate purlieu ; whereas, when I say in other 



248 



REJECTED ARTICLES. 



instances that a street has but one side of the 
way, I mean one favourite side, on which the 
houses are worth fifty per cent more rent than on 
the other. 

The best thing belonging to Cockspur Street, 
especially at this time in the evening, is the 
prospect it gives you of the above-named Club- 
houses. They are the handsomest ornaments 
the town has received since the spirit of im- 
provement has taken possession of our rulers. 
They have all the grandeur of the town residences 
of our principal nobility, without any of that 
gloom which always accompanies it except on 
their public nights. After dark, a nobleman's 
mansion in London looks like a great tomb, ex- 
cept on those nights when it takes upon itself 
to disturb the rest of the neighbourhood with the 
rattle of wheels, from the usual time of going 
to bed till that of rising again. But these Club- 
houses are transparent in every part, every even- 
ing ; and in passing by them outside, you see just 
enough of their brilliantly lighted rooms, and 
gorgeous furniture, to excite you to invest them 
with just the sort of company that they may be 
supposed to have been built for; — for which inves- 
titure, by the bye, they ought to be very much 
obliged to you, seeing that, without that, they 



LONDON LETTERS. 249 

are just so many " splendid deserts:" for an En- 
glish man thinks he does quite enough towards an 
establishment of this nature, if he subscribes his 
money to it : to subscribe his person too, is more 
than he thinks reasonable. He pays his twenty 
guineas a year that he may " belong'' to this or 
that Club. But to go to it is considerably more 
than he bargains for ; and if you insist on that, 
you cannot do less than pay him ! 

As Pall Mall, though one of the most agree- 
able streets in all London, is entirely a day street, 
and cuts but a gloomy figure at night, we will 
leave it on our left, and pass up that lively ano- 
maly, the Haymarket ; — keeping on the right hand 
side of it at first, that we may have a view of 
the handsome new facade of the Italian Opera, 
with its lofty colonnade of iron pillars ; and con- 
tinuing on the same side, that we may not admire 
the facade of the " Little Theatre," — because it is 
neither handsome in itself, nor would it look so if 
it really were, in the eyes of those who yearn 
after the little unsightly building which it has 
superseded, and in which they witnessed their 
" first plays." 

The Haymarket is a fine, bold-faced, open 
street, which has the air of being half-devoted to 
business, half to pleasure — the latter, however, 



250 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

predominating. In fact, besides the two Theatres, 
it is half-filled, on the western side, with taverns 
and houses of public resort of one kind or 
another ; and it is also the first spot where you 
begin to meet foreigners lounging along, with 
that pleasant air of an infinite want of anything 
to do, which is a virtue that no Englishman 
could ever even " assume/' The Haymarket con- 
tains half a dozen French houses for the enter- 
tainment of these happy idlers ; which however 
seem to have been established, more with a view 
to remind them of what a French Restaurant is 
not, than what it is ; and to let them know what 
a bad French dinner it is possible to get in Lon- 
don, for the price of a good English one. The 
opposite side of the way is occupied by shops, 
chiefly old established ones, which have a regular 
connexion belonging to them : for nobody thinks 
of coming here on purpose to buy, or of buying 
here by accident. On the left of this street there 
is a handsome opening, terminated by the statue 
in St. James's Square; and the whole street 
forms an ascent steeper than any other part of 
London, except Saint James's Street, which runs 
parallel with it farther west. 

Since we left the Strand we have missed those 
perpetual oppositely-flowing currents of human 



LONDON LETTERS* 251 

life, which have the singular faculty, for currents, 
of interpenetrating each other without being dis- 
turbed or retarded in their respective courses. 
On reaching the top of the Haymarket we come 
into this double current again, — which is, at this 
spot, growing stronger than ever, in consequence 
of its course being contracted, while its bulk is 
increased by the various branches that pour it in 
here, towards the east, from the Haymarket, Pic- 
cadilly, and Regent Street, and towards the west, 
through the narrow straits of Sidney and Cran- 
bourne Courts. The consequence of this con- 
fluence is, at all times of the day, and particularly 
at night, that the north side of Coventry Street 
is almost impassable, except to those who are 
more than usually expert in the mystery of making 
way under such circumstances. 

The character of the shops in this street is just 
what might be expected from the situation. 
None of them make any conspicuous shew, be- 
cause no one could stand to admire them if they 
did ; and therefore most of them are such as 
every neighbourhood must have. The only ex- 
ception to this is the Watch and Snuff-box shop 
of the Hawleys' — which stands just where the 
current of traffic separates — and which, next to 
that of the same persons in the Strand, (which 1 



ZOZ REJECTED ARTICLES. 

forgot to shew you,) makes a handsomer outward 
display than any of its kind in London. 

Just at the point above-mentioned the paths 
divide. We will take the left hand one, and pass 
into Piccadilly. This is a fine street, no doubt ; 
and by day-light there is a character of mingled 
liveliness and gentility about it, which makes it 
the pleasantest we have, for a mere promenade. 
But by lamp-light it does not preserve this cha- 
racter ; especially towards the latter half, which is 
lighted, or rather not lighted, by oil instead of 
gas : wherefore, those who are conversant in the 
parish politics of St. George's can alone tell. 

The first view of Piccadilly, on entering it here, 
at the east end, is fine ; because the gas-lights 
extend as far as the eye reaches, and there are 
few other private lights to interfere with their 
effect. Stepping onward a little, we arrive at 
those ever-busy scenes, the Coach Offices, — orna- 
mented by a whole menagerie of Spread Eagles, 
Bulls and Mouths, and Bears of all colours, 

" Black, white, and grey, with all their trumpery." 

These would be worth stopping at for a few 
moments, but that we shall meet with a still more 
striking specimen of the same characteristic and 
truly English scene, higher up. Passing these, 



LONDON LETTERS. 253 

then, we find ourselves in an open space where 
the buildings form a Circus, at the head of Wa- 
terloo Place on the left, and with the Regent's 
Quadrant sweeping away on the right. If this is 
not the most characteristic point of view in all 
London, it is without exception the most striking, 
and what may be called handsome — especially at 
night. 

Waterloo Place is situated on a regular decli- 
vity, and is terminated by Carlton Palace ; which 
building has the merit (the only one it has) 
of in no respect throwing into insignificance the 
range of which it now, in effect, forms a part. 
It is quite as handsome as the haberdasher's shop 
on the right of the street which it terminates, or 
the bootmaker's on the left : and it is no hand- 
somer. Which is, I suppose, just as it should be. 
They say we are a Nation of Shop-keepers ; and 
accordingly, the national architect who has im- 
mortalized himself (for at least fifty years to come) 
by his late improvements, seems to think that 
there is no reason whatever, why our Shops should 
not vie with our Palaces. 

I think he is quite right. But then he is carry- 
ing his principle to what I am afraid some people 
will think an impertinent extreme. There is not 



254 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

a single portion of Waterloo Place, or even Re- 
gent's Street, which, taking length for length, 
does not put the poor Palace to open shame, even 
before its very face. And as for the County Fire 
Office, which forms the pendant to the Palace, at 
the opposite end, — it actually looks down upon its 
low neighbour, with an air of infinite elevation ; 
and its lordly inhabitant and Director, Barber 
Beaumont the First, from the mode in which he 
directs the Morning Post to announce the Evening 
Levees of his Lady, evidently looks upon himself 
as sustaining a station at least as kingly as that of 
his opposite neighbour George the Fourth. 

This is perhaps carrying the levelling principles 
of architecture rather too far. And yet they say 
Mr. Nash is a great favourite even at Carlton 
Palace itself, which he has contrived to place in 
such a ridiculous predicament. This is a singular 
instance of royal humility, and ought not to go 
without its record in the annals of the hour. 

At all events, Waterloo Place is incomparably 
the most complete thing of the kind we possess ; 
and at night in particular the effect of it, seen 
from either end, is what I must call, for want of 
a better epithet, quite classical. This effect is 
rained, however, at what some will consider a 



LONDON LETTERS. 255 

rather extravagant, not to say a ridiculous and 
contradictory expence ; namely, by making a 
whole street full of Shops look like anything but 
what they should look like ; that is to say, what 
they are. In fact, a classical shop is a contra- 
diction in terms, anywhere but at Pompeii. 

Turning from the view down Waterloo Place, 
to that which opposes it on the other side the 
Circus, we look upon another view which, I 
believe, is quite unique. The Regent's Quadrant 
has the merit of being still more classical in its 
appearance and general effect than Waterloo 
Place ; and therefore it has the demerit of being 
still less appropriate to the purpose for which it is 
intended. In this gloomy climate of ours, shade 
is a thing that we seldom have occasion to seek, 
even in the country ; and in London, Richard's 
moody question of " Who saw the sun to-day ?" 
seldom meets with a satisfactory answer during 
more than two months in the year. Not that 
London needs sunshine. For my part, I think 
she is much better without it. She never looks 
so thoroughly herself as when dressed in her 
favourite dun-coloured cloak of sea-coal smoke. 
And as for " a suit of flame-coloured taffeta," it 
does not at all become her staid complexion and 



256 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

sober deportment. And even if she does secretly 
affect finery of this kind — even if she cannot help, 
now and then, in a momentary fit of spleen, com- 
plaining that the sun " disdains to shine" upon her 
— the next moment she is reasonable enough to 
recollect herself, and add, still with Richard, 

" What's that to me, more than to Richmond" 

on whose ineffable beauties he looks equally 
lowering?" 

But where am I getting to? I was going to 
say, that the Regent's Quadrant seems to have 
been erected for the laudable purpose of shewing 
that a set of shops (of which it entirely consists) 
may be made to look even less like what they are, 
and be less like what they ought to be, than any 
part of Waterloo Place itself. This desideratum 
is obtained, in the present case, by constructing 
a noble colonnade in front of the said shops ; 
which, in the first place, hides them entirely from 
the view of those who may be in search of them ; 
and in the second place, excludes every ray of 
light from them, even when they have been dis- 
covered . 

But all this, you know, is the shop-keepers' 
concern, not ours. It is quite enough for us, that 



LONDON LETTERS. 257 

the Regent's Quadrant, with its finely simple 
concentric colonnades of Doric pillars, sweeping- 
round towards the left from the point where we 
stand, and losing themselves in each other and in 
the misty twilight long before they come to an 
end, — present one of the most effective views of 
this kind that any metropolis can offer. 

It is lucky, however, that we are looking upon 
this handsome anomaly by night instead of by 
day; otherwise we should have to observe that 
the execrable English plan, of building our houses 
only two stories high instead of five or six, is 
nowhere productive of such mischievous effects, 
in a picturesque point of view, as in this in other 
respects noble range of building. When you 
look at the Regent's Quadrant by day-light, and 
as a whole, it has the appearance of being in- 
tended merely for the lower range of an erection ; 
and you cannot help fancying how fine it will look 
when it comes to be completed. 

The mode in which this portion of the new 
street is lighted produces an excellent effect ; 
though more, I imagine, from accident than de- 
sign. The range of great gas-lamps, that depend 
from the centre of each colonnade, give a brilliant 
light to the foot-path and the shops, while the 



258 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

colonnade itself, with its massy pillars, intercepts 
much of the light from passing out into the car- 
riage road, and leaves that in a state of half-shadow 
which is much more effective than the highest 
light would be. 

We will now pass onward, through the spot on 
which we have just been dwelling, and continue 
our examination of this most striking part of all 
our metropolis ; including the range of buildings 
from Carlton Palace on the south, to the so much 
vituperated Church at the beginning of Langham 
Place on the north-east. At the end of the 
Quadrant, Regent Street itself opens upon us in 
all its new-fledged beauties. And, to be candid, 
I must say that I wish those who do all they can 
to put us out of conceit of this only noticeable 
achievement of our own age in the matter of 
architecture, would put us in the way of compass- 
ing something better, or even hint to us how such 
a thing might have been accomplished — I mean, 
might have been with our existing " appliances 
and means." I do not want them to tell us, that 
if Salisbury Plain could be transplanted to the 
centre of London, and the Portland stone quarries 
could be persuaded to follow it, we might in that 
case build a square, a circus, a crescent, and 



LONDON LETTERS. 259 

what not, that would laugh the low-roofed tene- 
ments of Regent Street to scorn, and look down, 
in all the freshness of youth, upon the spot where 
the latter now stand, when that spot itself shall 
know them not, except as so many heaps of pre- 
mature rubbish. But this is not the question. I 
do not want to know what might have been, if 
other things had happened to be as they are not ; 
— but what could be, everything else being as it 
was. I do not even want to know what London 
would have been by this time, if George the 
Fourth had been Buonaparte, the House of Com- 
mons a Chamber of Deputies, and Messrs. Hume 
and Brougham persons in posse. What I desire 
to know is, how Mr. Nash could have built a 
better street than he has done, with the means he 
had at command ; and what I wonder at is, how- 
he has contrived to build one, half so far from 
bad. 

If any one of you, or all united, can solve me 
these questions, do. My paper being exhausted, 
I pause for a reply ; which, if I do not receive in 
due course of post, I shall take it for granted 
that in matters of this merely metropolitan nature 
you yield the pas to my superior knowledge, and 
shall in that case proceed to describe the rest of 

s2 



260 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

this new, and by comparison noble, feature in the 
face of modern London. 

In the mean time know me to be 

Your ever-loving cousin, 

Terence Templeton.* 

* It is proper to mention that it is not Mr. Templeton's fault 
if this Walk breaks off more abruptly than some of its readers 
may wish. But variety being above all things else my object 
in the selection of these papers from the vast mass which have 
come into my hands, I have been fain to stop short in the middle 
of this and one or two other communications, the forte of whose 
writers is decidedly continuation : otherwise, I should have been 
forced to " curtail of their fair proportions" others equally en- 
titled to attention. — Editor. 



BROTHER JONATHAN; 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS. 



BROTHER JONATHAN ; 

OR 

THE NEW ENGLANDERS.* 

REJECTED FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 



If his Satanic Majesty should make up his 
mind to ascend among us in the present day, 

* Unless I am mis-informed, the reason this article did not ap- 
pear in its proper place, is, that the writer of Brother Jonathan 
has neutralized his American title to the patronage of the " Prince 
of Critics," by becoming a writer in Blackwood's Magazine. What 
still greater literary enormity (if greater there be in the eyes of 
some persons) he can have committed, to have so long cut off 
from critical notice one of the most extraordinary works of its 
day-, is more than I can guess. At all events, I am happy to 
have been the medium of presenting to the public this first tole- 
rably fair estimate of a work which (to adopt the distinction made 
by its shrewd and lively critic) at least " indicates," if it does 
not " display," more talent than the whole body of American lite- 
rature besides. — JEditar.f 

t [Since these pages were sent to press, a paper has appeared in 



264 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

it is probable his first attempt to ingratiate him- 
self with the world will consist in writing a book. 
Indeed he can scarcely do less, in compliment to 
that particular school which Dr. Southey has 
thought proper to do him the honour of dignify- 
ing with his style and title. At any rate, if he 
should write a book, we shall assuredly be among 
the first to " give the devil his due," whatever that 
may be. Let us then not withhold it from a 
person almost as little likely to think, act, or 
write like other people. 

It is said that when a certain distinguished secre- 
tary of the present day first turned his back (not 
" upon himself," but) upon his native country, Ire- 
land, and came up to seek his fortune in the great 
world of London, he was introduced to C umberland ; 
and that the literary veteran exclaimed when he was 
gone, " a talking potatoe, by G — d !" And on this 
our first interview with the author before us, sober- 
suited critics as we are, and therefore altogether 
unaddicted to the style exclamatory, we can 

the London Magazine, the anonymous writer of which claims the 
authorship of Brother Jonathan. And truly the paper writer, 
whoever he may be, is, in some respects, not an unlikely person 
to have produced the novel. But there is no saying : for if the 
writer in the magazine is to be believed on his word, there's no 
believing a word he says. — Editor,'] 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 2(55 

scarcely refrain from uttering aloud, " a writing 
savage, by G — d !" — for that the work, the title 
of which we have placed at the head of this paper, 
is the production of a North American savage, we 
have no doubt whatever ; and if our " exquisite 
reason " for so thinking be demanded of us, all 
we can give is, that it can be the production of no 
one else. 

Not to stand shilly shally over it, (which is a 
mode of treatment it will bear less than any other,) 
Brother Jonathan is, we will venture to say, the 
most extraordinary work of its kind which this 
age of extraordinary works has put forth — in Great 
Britain, we mean : what America or Germany 
may have produced in this sort, is more than we 
are able to say ; and the former of those countries 
in particular, may, for any thing we know to the 
contrary, be able to count a whole catalogue of 
similar works, written by the same hand — or 
rather hands — for we imagine this person employs 
both his hands at the same time, one on one 
volume, and the other on the another ! At least, 
we can at the moment hit upon no other theory, to 
explain the extraordinary and headlong rapidity 
of style, as well as the insane incoherence of 
matter, which prevail throughout these volumes — 



26<> REJECTED ARTICLES, 

which "prevail" throughout them, but which 
(be it expressly understood) are far from being 
their only distinguishing characteristics, and which 
are still less the causes of our feeling called upon 
to notice them. 

In fact, the author of these volumes, whoever he 
may be — whether " a saint, a savage, or a sage," 
and whether this be his first work or his fiftieth, 
(and it may, from its internal evidence, be either 
the one or the other,) — is, to say the least of 
him, the most original writer of his day ; and 
we are greatly mistaken indeed, if he will not 
turn out to be, without one exception, the most 
extraordinarily gifted of them all, as far as mere 
natural faculties go. How far adventitious 
circumstances may interfere, to frustrate the 
operation of those faculties, or turn their effects to 
evil account instead of good, is more than we 
shall pretend to predict, in the present early stage 
of our acquaintance with their possessor ; but 
that no circumstances can ever neutralize them, 
we are confident. 

Brother Jonathan, if it must be classed at all, 
may be placed under the head of that altogether 
modern anomaly, the historical novel ; and if an 
express object must be assigned to it, it will be 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 267 

that of illustrating the manners of the Americans, 
and of the New Englanders in particular, at the 
commencement of the American Revolutionary 
War. And in fact, the work does furnish this 
illustration, in a most striking and effective manner ; 
and as no other work does, and no other writer 
that we are acquainted with is at all likely to do. 
But the truth is, that neither the above, nor any- 
thing else, can be assigned as the specific object 
and end of this singular production, — which we 
conceive to have been written, not as a means to 
any end whatever, but as an end in itself. 

We live in an age when, for the first time in the 
history of mankind, authors may be said to be 
natural productions : that is to say, they spring up 
necessarily, out of the circumstances of the times, 
We imagine that the writer of Brother Jonathan 
was born an author, and that he could no more 
have failed to fulfil his calling, than he could to 
have exercised any other of the active functions of 
his nature. His mind is of such a character and 
constitution, that it could not choose but fill itself 
to overflowing with ideas and images, no matter 
by what circumstances it might have been sur- 
rounded ; and being so filled, it cannot choose but 
pour its contents forth, like an overflowing vessel* — r 



268 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

reckless of all consequences, and without any neces- 
sary reference to recipients. If he were thrown 
upon a desert island to-morrow, and left without 
the remotest hope of escape from it, he would, the 
day after, begin writing at the rate of fifty pages 
a-day, and never cease till his materials were ex- 
hausted : we mean his material ones ; for his moral 
ones would never be likely to fail. The former 
deficiency being, under present circumstances, not 
within hope, we see no probable end whatever 
to the productions of his pen. At any rate, Dr. 
Southey may abandon his reported project of 
achieving immortality by writing more than Vol- 
taire did ; for here is a person, who, if he lives 
to the ordinary age of man, may, if he pleases, 
write more than all that Voltaire has written, and 
all that Dr. Southey intends to write ; and it will 
be his own fault, not Nature's, if he does not 
write it ail better than either ! 

The reader will be able to form some faint no- 
tion of the fertility (fur we will not call it diffuse- 
ness) of this writer's invention, as well as of his 
pen, when we say, that though Brother Jonathan 
consists of three thick volumes, of four hundred 
and fifty pages each, it only manages to make us 
acquainted with the events of about a year or so in 



BROTHER JONATHAN 269 

the life of its hero, — who is in fact only a boy when 
we are called upon to take leave of him, and who 
during that brief period is made to undergo as 
many adventures, both in love and war, as would 
fill the lives and furnish forth the pages of half a 
dozen ordinary romance heroes and romances. He 
has no less than three love affairs on his hands and 
heart, all at the same moment ; each appertaining 
to a heroine of an absolutely distinct character ; 
and each illustrative of a distinct kind of love. 
And all this takes place while he is engaged in 
the very thick of the " guns, drums, trumpets, 
blunderbuss, and thunder," of the opening of the 
American War. 

But besides this, the hero himself, as well as 
every other principal character in the work, is not 
only him or her self, but some one, two, three, 
or more other persons at the same time. Add to 
which, we are introduced to several historical cha- 
racters ; two of them no less distinguished than 
Washington and Franklin themselves; and one 
character who, as if all this were not enough to 
fill up the space of one year, is gifted with the 
faculty of relating events that never happened at 
all! 

We shall not attempt to make our readers ac- 



270 R EJECTED ARTICLES. 

quainted with the plot of Brother Jonathan ; and 
if for no other reason, for this very sufficient one 
— that though we have just read the work from 
beginning to end, and with that undivided atten- 
tion which extraordinary pleasure in the perusal of 
a work always excites, we are at this present 
writing as absolutely ignorant of the said plot as 
if it had never been propounded to us. And to 
say the truth, we consider this circumstance to be of 
very little importance, where, as in the case before 
us, there is enough to arrest the attention of the 
reader, independently of any merely progressive 
interest arising from an artificial concatenation of 
events. We doubt if the Scotch Novels would be 
so good as they are, if their plots were better : we 
say this of them abstractedly, as works. And we 
do not doubt, that if the writer of them had waited 
to make his plots better, he would have ended 
by making his works upon the whole not so good ; 
for what they would gain by the process in one 
way, they would more than lose in another. It is 
the characters, the scenes, and the descriptions, 
that we remember, and desire to remember, and 
not the mere vehicle which conveys them to us, 
any more than it is the paper and print which 
place them before our bodily senses. And perhaps 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 271 

it will be found on examination, that we feel the 
moral beauties of those works more during the 
perusal, and are better able to recall them after- 
wards, in proportion as the mere plots have gained 
little hold of our attention at the moment, and 
have dwelt but faintly and confusedly on the 
memory. 

But be this as it may, the readers of Brother 
Jonathan will do well not to complain of its defi- 
ciencies in regard to plot : for its writer, to say 
nothing of his being evidently a person who will 
not be schooled as to what he shall or shall not 
write, is altogether incapable, by the constitution 
of his mind, even of imagining, much less of 
constructing, a regular concatenation of events. 
In short his genius is anything (we had almost 
said everything) but mechanical ; and we are 
greatly mistaken if it is not capable of producing 
works which shall possess every possible good 
quality, (not to mention every bad one,) only 
excepting that one (whether good or bad we shall 
not determine) of having a beginning, a middle, 
and an end. 

We have said that this work is the most original 
of its day ; and if originality consists in a something 
which can be likened to no other thing that existed 



272 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

previously, our proposition will not be disputed by 
the most cavilling of critics. A work, to be per- 
fectly original, should not merely remind us of no 
other work of the same class, but prevent us from 
thinking of any other in connection with it. And 
such, we will venture to say, is the case with 
Brother Jonathan. 

But this applies generally. To be perfectly 
original, a work must possess characters, a turn 
of thought and of sentiment, and a style, altogether 
its own. And here again Brother Jonathan stands 
alone in our literature. 

But then, to render its claim to originality of 
any value even if admitted, the materials in the 
management of which that originality is shewn 
must be drawn from the great store-house of 
nature, and be referable to something existing 
there, and therefore interesting to the mind and 
heart of man; otherwise the originality becomes 
mere eccentricity and impertinence. 

And here too we are bound to say that the 
writer before us merits no mean degree of com- 
mendation. His characters, though they seem 
to come before us as if from a new world of 
which we had no previous notion, (as indeed 
so far as we are concerned they do,) all bear 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 273 

that impress of our common nature which makes 
them at once pass current with us as beings 
in regard to whom we are bound to feel a human 
sympathy. The thoughts and sentiments, too, 
which, by a mistake common to all writers of fic- 
titious narrative, he occasionally thinks fit to put 
forth in his own proper person, though full 
of novelty, are seldom founded in other than 
sound views of the subject in question. And 
above all, his style, which is more exclusively his 
own than any thing else belonging to him, is so 
only because he has had courage to tell his story 
in the manner that is most natural to him — be- 
cause he has put his heart, his memory, and his 
tongue, into his pen, instead of adopting the usual 
method, of letting his pen supply the place of all 
these. 

Let us go a little more into detail ; for as we 
intend to present the reader with little or no ac- 
count of the plot of this work, we can the better 
afford to dwell somewhat minutely upon its cha- 
racteristic particulars. Conceive, then, of the 
hero of a work, every event of which is fraught 
with the most romantic interest, and every page of 
which includes some subtle refinement of thought 
or sentiment— conceive the hero of a work like 



274 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

this, as an overgrown lout of a boy, brought up in 
the Back Woods of America, — with a stoop in his 
shoulders, a swing in his gait, hob-nailed shoes 
upon his feet, a smock-frock upon his back, a 
nasal twang in his speech, and almost every phrase 
he utters regular Yankee ! And conceive (if you 
can) how all this shall obtrude itself at every page, 
without for an instant weakening the interest you 
from the first moment feel towards this singular 
hero, or even throwing over him the slightest air 
of the ridiculous — an association which is fatal to 
anything like a serious interest, however deep- 
seated it may previously have been. 

Courageous even to a pitch of mad-headed fool- 
hardiness, — yet occasionally trembling in his shoes 
with sheer affright ; — open and sincere as Truth itself, 
— yet sometimes artful, hypocritical, and a liar; — 
proud and ambitious as Lucifer, — yet fooling away 
his time in idle fancies and effeminate dreams ; — 
an adorer of reason and justice,- — yet pursuing to 
the verge of destruction and death a being who 
never injured him ; — his heart " pure as the thought 
of purity," — yet leading him to cast himself head- 
long (though advisedly) into the lowest depths of 
profligate degradation ; — high-minded and chival- 
rous as a hero of ancient romance, — yet heaping 



13R0THER JONATHAN. 275 

daily injuries and insults on the heart that avowed- 
ly adores him, and that he adores :— such, and a 
great deal more, is the compound of contradictions 
to which this author introduces us, under the 
name of Walter Harwood. And yet, such is the 
intuitive skill and knowledge of human nature with 
which he has mixed up together (without amalga- 
mating) these opposites, that in no one instance 
do we feel them to be necessarily incompatible 
with each other, nor do they greatly interfere with 
that sentiment of deference and respect which 
novel readers are bound to entertain towards a 
hero of three goodly volumes. 

But if the hero of this strange work is not of 
the ordinary class, the heroine with which our 
author has supplied him is at least a match for 
him in singularity. At our first introduction 
it is difficult to suppose her anything but a born 
idiot. Presently, however, we begin to fancy she 
is more mad than foolish, and more cunning than 
either. But after a little further acquaintance 
we find her one of the sweetest and purest, one of 
the most delicate and feminine of all the beings 
that imagination has formed from the actual 
models which nature has furnished. With all 
the wildness and originality, as well as all the 

t 2 



276 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

fervour of character possessed by her lover, she 
has that equable placidity of temperament, and 
that steady consistency of feeling and of purpose, 
which were never allied to the former qualities 
except in woman. We know of no imaginary 
character bearing the slightest resemblance to 
Edith Cummin, with the exception of Mignon, in 
Goethe's Wilhelmeister — from whom it is probable 
that the author before us took his notion of Edith. 
But let us add, that if she wants that etherial 
lightness of outline, and that thin transparency 
of colouring (if we may so speak), which belong 
to the singular creation of Goethe, and which 
give to it an almost spirit-like and superhuman 
air, she is altogether infinitely more natural, with- 
out being either less imaginative, or less touch- 
ingly simple, child-like, and innocent. And the 
consequence of this difference is, that she excites 
in the reader a much more permanent and va- 
luable, because a more purely human interest and 
sympathy. 

But as we have hinted before, our author is not 
satisfied in supplying his hero with one heroine, 
but furnishes him with no less than three ; be- 
tween whom he is at no little loss how to divide 
himself fairly, and according to his somewhat 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 277 

singular notions of right and justice in such 
matters. As far as we can judge for him, his 
heart seems to belong throughout to his first love, 
Edith ; his imagination to Olive ; and his reason 
to the poor, polluted, and spirit-broken, but pure- 
minded and repentant Emily. 

These two latter supernumerary ladies we can- 
not stay to introduce formally to the reader ; but 
we must not pass them by without saying that 
both characters are drawn with great distinctness 
and truth, and that both evince in the author 
a very subtle as well as a very extensive acquaint- 
ance with the movements of the human heart ; 
an acquaintance, however, which we must con- 
sider as more intuitive than practical, or in other 
words, as springing rather from a diligent watch- 
ing and questioning of his own nature, than from 
actual observations on that of other people. 

Of the other imaginary characters introduced 
in this tale, we can only stay to particularize two 
— both of which are as entirely original as those 
already referred to, and both are drawn with 
equal vigor, spirit, and truth, so far as the ex- 
tremely confused and defective nature of the plot 
permits us to follow and observe them. Jonathan 
Peters, while he retains that title, and during his 



278 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

appearance in the family of the hero's father, is 
undoubtedly sketched with a bold, masterly, and 
felicitous pencil. His admirable good sense, and 
the skill with which he applies it, in connection 
with his extensive knowledge of the world and 
the human heart, to gain and keep an over- 
whelming ascendancy in the family in which 
(nobody can tell for what reason) he has domi- 
ciliated himself at the opening of the story, — pro- 
duce a most powerful effect upon the reader ; an 
effect which is rendered necessary, in order to sus- 
tain the influence which he is afterwards to exer- 
cise (unconsciously and unintentionally) upon all 
the subsequent events of the story, when he has 
almost wholly disappeared from it.. As to his 
after introduction, under his aliases of Warwick 
Savage, Evans, &c. these are among those gra- 
tuitous make-weights to the plot, which alto- 
gether confuse and destroy its -consecutive in- 
terest, and render it little better than a wild and 
incoherent hubbub of scenes and incidents, pro- 
ducing together the effect of a feverish dream. 

The other character that we have alluded to 
above is Harry Flemming — a sort of Ferdinand 
Mendez Pinto — a " liar of the first magnitude. " 
It should seem from the principle feature of this 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 279 

character, as well as from some other points in 
the work, that our author believes in the here- 
ditary nature of the moral qualities of man. At 
any rate, the only argument we are offered, to 
shew that Harry Flemming is the son of his father, 
is, that whereas the father was a little given to 
embellishment in his relation of any event that 
occurred to him, the son invents the whole story 
from beginning to end, and relates it in such a 
manner that you believe it at least as confidently 
as if you saw it happen. He invents too, with a 
sincerity of purpose, and a fervour of imagination, 
which almost have the effect of doing away the 
demerit of his delusions, by making them more of 
poetical creations than anything else. It has 
been_said in accusation of poets, that they are 
only liars : and it may be said in excuse of our 
author's liar, that he is only a poet. This cha- 
racter does not occupy much space in the work ; 
but what there is of it is the most spirited sketch 
of the whole. 

The only particular in which this singular au- 
thor has chosen to follow any fashion but his own 
in this work, is in the introduction of other than 
the natural machinery of the story : whether to 
call it super, sub, or ^/-natural, we cannot very 



280 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

well determine. In conformity with the taste of 
the day, the writer of Brother Jonathan, as if his 
story was not wild and incoherent enough in 
itself, has made the " confusion worse con- 
founded," by introducing a Prophet and a Witch, 
who seem to act the parts respectively of good 
and evil genius in regard to the hero and all his 
concerns, and who contrive by their joint influ- 
ence, or rather their perpetual opposition, to make 
that absolutely and irremediable unintelligible, 
which would have been very nearly so without 
their aid. Perhaps the writer may tell us that 
he has introduced these two mischievous Marplots, 
because he found them in the state of society in 
which his scenes are laid, and which they pro- 
fess to illustrate ; and he will probably shelter 
himself behind the example of our illustrious 
countryman, the author of Waverley : though we 
scarcely think him a person likely to plead pre- 
cedent for anything he may think fit to either say 
or do. The truth is, that with all his strong 
sense and sturdy straitforwardness, he has a 
lurking taste for the unintelligible, and a faculty 
that will secure him from ever being debarred the 
indulgence of it. And as to mere mystery in the 
abstract, he knows very well that there cannot 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 281 

be too much of that in a work which would hope 
to succeed with the class of readers to whom his 
ostensibly addresses itself ; that in fact a novel, 
to be popular with those who will pay for the 
reading of it, must be " perplexed in the extreme" 
— or rather, from one extreme to the other — from 
the beginning to the end. 

Thus far of the merely imaginative portion of 
this work ; — which portion, though it is un- 
doubtedly the result of great intellectual power, 
and is fraught with much scattered interest, and 
every here and there with the most exquisite 
touches of passion and pathos, is altogether wild, 
incoherent, and unsatisfactory as a whole j and 
what is still worse, it is not without a leetle 
affectation — to adopt a New England word from 
its author. 

But not so the portion which is founded on 
mere fact and observation. That is in its way, 
and as far as it goes, incomparably the best illus- 
tration of American manners we have yet been 
presented with. The half-savage, half-civilized 
scenes at the early home of the hero, on the bor- 
ders of the Back Woods — those which occur on 
his journey thence to New York — those connected 
with the first declaration of American indepen- 



282 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

deuce, and the opening of the War — the sketches 
connected with the native Indian manners, and 
growing out of their wild superstitions — and 
finally the descriptions of local scenery — all these 
are drawn by the hand not only of a master, but 
of a master who has been absolutely self-taught ; 
or rather, who evidently believes that there is no 
teacher worth attending to in such matters, but 
Observation alone ; and who therefore boldly re- 
peats to us, in so many words, what she has re- 
peated to him. 

Considering the kind of scenes and the class 
of manners which his narrative leads him to place 
before us, it is pretty clear that such a describer 
must not reckon upon the suffrages of readers 
who pique themselves on the refinement of their 
tastes. But those who like to hear the plain 
truth told in the plainest words that will tell it, 
may here meet with some of the most lively, 
spirited, and vigorous pictures of national man- 
ners that have ever been painted. We have no 
mincing the matter here — no squeamish keeping 
out of sight of ungainly objects or obnoxious 
habits of feeling — -no finical fining down of 
phrases — no effeminate refinements of one thing 
into another, or artificial contrasts which neu- 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 283 

tralize all truth, of effect. In short, the author of 
Brother Jonathan has the wit to see, and the cou- 
rage to attempt to shew, that truth and nature 
are quite good enough to be looked at as they 
really are, and are much more likely to appear 
what they really are when looked at in their 
nakedness, than when dressed up in the Monmouth 
Street foppery of falsehood and art. 

We shall now present the reader with a few 
extracts from this singular work — without which, 
and indeed we are almost afraid with which, he 
will not be able to gain, from what we have said, 
anything like a distinctive notion of it. And to 
say truth, we shall not be very sorry if this should 
be the case, provided what we have said should 
lead to the general perusal of the work itself : for 
we are disposed to fear that the extraordinary 
originality displayed in Brother Jonathan is cal- 
culated to insure it anything rather than exten- 
sive popularity in the present day, unless some 
adventitious impulse be given to it from without 
in the first instance. And we are confirmed in 
this fear by the fact of its having been already 
many months before the public, without its having 
hitherto attracted any notice whatever. 

We have already hinted at the singular cha- 



284 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

racter of the heroine of this New England story. 
We cannot attempt to convey a notion of Edith 
Cummin by means of extracts from those por- 
tions of the work in which her character is de- 
veloped. But we will do the next best thing, by 
presenting the author's conception of her. 

# " Edith Cummin — we shall pass over the rest 
for the present — was a Virginian ; a niece of 
Abraham Harwood : a creature, so whimsical, so 
contradictory, that, for many years, until her cha- 
racter changed, (all at once, in. a single winter,) it 
would have been quite impossible to describe her, 
so as to give one a true notion of what she really 
was; without leading her out, making her talk, 
and showing her off, in a thousand ways, at the 
same time. 

" She was little ; very girlish, very spirited, and 
quite singular in her whole appearance ; with 

* The reader will have the goodness to attribute the singular 
punctuation of these extracts to anybody but us. Whether it has 
been invented by the printer of Brother Jonathan, or the author, 
is more than we can guess. But of this we have very little 
doubt, that one most prevailing cause of the want of success of 
the work is this very system (for it is done, not by accident, but 
on a kind of system, such as it is) of pointing —which mangles 
and fritters away the effect of many of the finest passages, and 
changes not a few into pure and impracticable nonsense, 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 285 

rich, plentiful hair, always in the way of herself, 
or somebody else ; a pale complexion ; large, 
hazel eyes, full of moonlight and water, never 
still for a moment : — one hour she was a woman, 
the next, a child, a baby, a simpleton ; with 
hardly wit enough to keep herself out of the fire. 
Now, she would be found sitting in a corner, 
alone ; purple with cold ; poring over some great, 
heavy, serious book, such as no other child, 
of her age, ever thought of poring over; and, 
after a little time, perhaps, cuddled up in a heap, 
with her loose hair falling about her face ; pout- 
ing and sobbing over some poor two-penny ballad, 
such as no other child ever thought of sobbing 
over." 

" She had a thousand childish ways with her ; 
innocent, simple ways, which there was no speak- 
ing seriously about, absurd as many of them were ; 
a sprightly, sincere temper ; without one atom of 
art, or affectation. She had a knack, too, quite 
her own, of bringing the water into your eyes, and 
a smile about your mouth, at the same time ; and 
always (which was the charm, after all) without 
intending it, or knowing it, or even caring for it, 
if she did know it. She loved romping ; ' that 
she did ;' and would go without her dinner any 
time, for a good long race with her cousin Watty's 



286 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

large dog, under the elm trees ; or any thing- 
else, for a few hearty tumbles, all alone — head 
over heels — in the long fresh grass ; or the newly 
mown hay, before the rich clover blossoms were 
dead." 

" During these pastimes, it was amusing enough 
to see, with what an air, she punished all intru- 
ders ; not even excepting her ' dear, dear cousin 
Watty/ whom, in the language of old Virginia, 
she loved, ' mighty bad ; so she did.' In such 
a case, at such a time, Edith would look and 
speak, much more like a dwarf woman, caught 
perhaps with her night-cap on, or slippers off; 
than like a sad little tom-boy, as — begging her 
pardon — she certainly was. — Her large eyes would 
sparkle, — so the men ' allowed' — like the mis- 
chief; and she would stand a tip-toe, with a 
dignity, quite heroic, for such a diminutive little 
creature. 

" She was perpetually doing what nobody was 
prepared for — perpetually making people jump; 
and had, if there be such a one, the faculty of 
unexpectedness within her; like a Leyden jar, 
always ready to be let off. At one time, it would 
really appear, as if she had been lying in wait, 
like a torpedo-fish, in the water, for an opportu- 
nity to set people tingling ; at another, as if she 



BROTHER JONATHAN, 287 

enjoyed, in her very soul, the confusion of those ; 
especially if they were grown up, who, led astray 
by her manner and size, had mistaken her for 
a child. A word, or a laugh, was enough ; just 
when some stranger, perhaps, who had been 
looking at her absurd gambols, with a large dog, 
was on the point of pulling her into his lap, for a 
fine romp — only a word, or a laugh ; and he 
would start back, as if he had been playing with 
an electrical machine." 

" Between the upper and lower parts of her face, 
there was a remarkable contradiction. Judging 
by her forehead and look, you would call her 
much older ; by her mouth, much younger than 
she was. Her large eyes were sometimes full of 
strange, womanly meaning ; solemn and beauti- 
ful, beyond anything that we see in the eyes of 
children ; while her mouth was always — no matter 
where she was — no matter though her eyes- were 
full of tears — her mouth was always just ready for 
a laugh. 

" Her character was like her face ; whatever she 
did, whatever she said, was full of contradiction. 
She was a puzzle. She would say the strangest 
out-of-the-way things ; now, like a little child ; 
now, like something wiser than a woman : at one 
time, as if she wanted common sense ; at another, 



288 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

as if she were inspired. She had, in truth, all 
the simplicity of a child, with much of the woman's 
loftiness." 

" There were times also, when her thoughtful 
eyes, her pale face — and mouth, like the wet rose- 
bud — were brimful of something, like poetry ; 
and others, while she sat in the corner, with a 
profusion of hair, overshadowing her whole face 
■ — when she might have passed for an idiot ; so 
patiently — so stupidly tranquil, would she remain, 
for a whole hour, together ; looking into the 
ashes, where others were parching corn • or watch- 
ing the current of sparks, that rushed up the 
chimney, whenever the ' back log ' moved, or 
the ' forestick ' parted in the fire. — There was 
that, also, in her look and manner, while she 
was reading by herself; or listening, attentively, 
to the conversation of others, which would have 
been regarded, by some, as the indication of a soft 
and submissive temper. But, if anything hap- 
pened ; if she were taken by surprise ; or found, 
on looking up, that she had been observed — 
there was, instantly, over all her face, a look of 
insulted womanhood ; a something absolutely im- 
perious about her clear forehead ; and a sort of 
beautiful petulance about her mouth, which, be- 
fore one could make up his opinion of her, would 



BROTHER JONATHAN 289 

be gone — for ever gone — like the shadow of a 
strange bird, from a lighted mirror. " Vol. I. pp. 
26—33. 

Our next extract shall consist of a piece of local 
description, in which these volumes abound, but 
much of which, though steeped in a vein of fine, 
bold, full sounding eloquence, is rather poetical 
from its mistiness than picturesque from its pre- 
cision and distinctness. The following, though 
somewhat overstrained and extravagant, conveys 
a gorgeous and glowing idea (not a picture) of the 
sight it describes. 

" The autumnal beauty of a North American 
forest cannot be exaggerated. It is like nothing 
else on earth . Many a time have we gone through 
it ; slowly tilting over a pretty blue lake, there, 
among the hills ; our birch canoe dipping, with 
every motion of the paddle — the waters beneath 
us — all the mountains about — all — unknown to 
the world ; in a solitude — a quiet- — profound as 
death — and bright as heaven ; the shores over- 
hung with a superb autumnal foliage ; and a sky 
so wonderful — so visionary — that all the clouds, 
and all the mountains were of a piece, in the clear 
water ; and our boat was like a balloon. 

" Say what you will, there is nothing to be 
compared with a scene of this kind — about an 

u 



290 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

hour before sunset — in the depth of a great North 
American solitude ; — a vast amphitheatre of wil- 
derness, rock and mountain — after the trees are 
changed by the frost. People may talk of their 
fine Italian skies ; of their hot, bright East In- 
dian skies ; of the deep midnight blue, of the 
South American skies. We have seen them all ; 
slept under them all ; slept under a sky, like one 
great moon ; — worshipped under them all ; — seen 
them through all their changes, of storm and 
sunshine — darkness and light ; and we say, that, 
in reality, they are dim, heavy — unclouded, un- 
interesting — compared with your North American 
skies, a little before, and after sunset. 

M And so, too, of the garniture ; the superb gar- 
niture of a North American wilderness, after two 
or three clear, frosty nights. There is nothing 
to compare with it, under heaven. The moun- 
tains — vallies— woods — all burst into flower ; and 
all at once. Other countries are in a better state 
of cultivation. Their trees are less numerous; 
their wild shrubbery, less like a vegetable inunda- 
tion over the land — covering every foot of the 
earth ; or the changes of their colour, from season 
to season, are slow and gradual. 

" It is not so, in America — North America. 
There, the transformation is universal — instanta- 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 291 

neous. A single night will do it. In the even- 
ing of a fine day, perhaps, all the great woods 
will be green — with hardly a red, or a brown, 
or a yellow leaf. A sharp frost will set in, at 
night. Before the sun rises again, the boundless 
verdure of a whole province — a whole empire, 
in truth, will be changed. In the morning, there 
will be hardly a natural green leaf to be found. 
Before a week is over, go where you may, through 
the superb wilderness, you will meet with no- 
thing but gay, brilliant scarlet — purple — orange ; 
with every possible variety of brown, light blue, 
and vivid crimson; or blood colour. Of all the 
trees, none but the evergreen tribe, will keep 
their integrity. They will show along the battle- 
ments of the mountain — darker than ever — more 
cloudy than ever ; like so many architectural ruins, 
or surviving turrets — -in the splendour of the sur- 
rounding landscape. 

" No, no — it is not saying too much of all 
this beauty — of all this great magnificence — 
when the fresh, cold, brisk wind of the season, 
gets among the branches — after such a night — 
and blows up the superfluous leafing, to the warm 
sunshine — like a tempest, among prodigious 
flowers — tearing and scattering the tulip colour- 
ed foliage over all the earth, and over all the 

u 2 



292 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

waters ; no, it is not saying too much — merely to 
say — that, under heaven — throughout all the 
vegetable creation, there is no spectacle of beauty, 
or show ; of richness, or grandeur — to be com- 
pared with it. Imagine — we do not mind ap- 
pearing a little absurd, if, thereby, we may give 
the stranger, a true idea of this appearance — 
imagine, therefore, a great wilderness of poppies, 
or tulips — outspreading itself on every side — 
reaching quite away to the horizon — over hill, and 
over valley ; — or a wood, literally encumbered — 
heavy — with great, gorgeous, live butterflies — for 
ever in motion. 

" We have been a traveller; we have looked 
upon the dark Norwegian woods — the dull ever- 
greens — towering up — into the sky — covering 
whole provinces ; woods, too, of stupendous oak 
— each tree, if the soil were divided, overshadow- 
ing a man's inheritance — flourishing bravely 
through whole territories : more than one quiet, 
solitary place — entirely shut in, by the hills — 
flowering all over — all the year round. But we 
have never met with — never heard of — never 
looked upon, elsewhere, that profusion of glorious 
vegetable beauty, which is to be seen, every 
* fall, 9 in the woods of North America; heaped 
up, on all the banks of all the rivers — up— up— 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 293 

to the very skies — on the great mountains — or, 
accumulated over the low countries — and welter- 
ing there, all the day through, in the light, or 
shadow — wind, or sunshine, of the season." Vol. 
ii. pp. 29—33. 

We shall now offer a specimen of those parts of 
Brother Jonathan which perhaps deserve to rank 
as the most valuable, and will assuredly be looked 
upon by many as the most if not the only intelli- 
gible ones. We mean the scenes illustrative of 
the state of manners and society in the country 
where the events of the story take place. The 
rare merit of the following scene consists in the 
literal and uncompromising truth with which every 
part of it is given. Walter Harwood, the hero of 
the story, is about to leave his home in Connecti- 
cut, and seek his fortune at New York ; and he is 
conveyed thither after the following fashion — the 
only one of the time. 

" Waiter sprang away; and came bounding 
over the low stone walls, and brush fences, ' like 
a deer,' — with a large dog at his heels. A mo- 
ment more, and he was stowed away in what is 
called a * stage/ in America. But Panther, 
somehow — the large dog — did not appear to com- 
prehend, precisely, the nature of the arrange- 
ment. He stood still — waiting the sign from his 



294 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

beloved master — friend — companion — either to 
spring up, on the roof— into the carriage — or to 
follow a-foot. 

" The driver blew a farewell blast. Panther 
moaned — but stood still. The wheels moved— 
rattled — smoked : he stood still, nevertheless, 
waiting the signal, up to the very last moment, 
poor fellow ; when the carriage turned out of the 
lane, all at once, into the great high-road. He 
uttered a howl, when he saw that ; ran off to the 
fence — rose up — and put his two fore-paws upon 
the gate. Walter saw him — heard his voice, end- 
ing as he had never heard it before, in a sick, 
angry, impatient yelp, or two. He covered his 
face, then ; pulled his hat over his weary eyes ; 
and got back into the carriage, as far as he 
could. 

M ' A pooty eonsid'rble funny noise that, I guess 
— for sich a whelp/ said one of his neighbours. 
' I never heard no thin' like, it afore/ 

" ' Nor I ' — said another — * in all my life : ony 
once — tell ye how that was, though. One day, 
our Towzle — he fit a painter ; — well — and so, 
the painter, he smacks him thro' the ribs — clean 
as a whistle — same as a cat ; — well ; an' so ; ever 
see a cat ? — wild cat, I mean ? — well — an' so — ■ 
poor Towzle, he sets up sich a noise ! right away ; 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 295 

jess like that; — well — an' so, I say; you, what's 
that air dog's name V 

'* ' Poor Panther, sir — only poor Panther.' 

" They had now come to another turn ; a place, 
where Panther never failed his poor master, be- 
fore, when he was going away. Our hero looked 
out; rubbed his eyes — glanced, hastily, over 
the grounds — but no — no Panther was to be seen. 
The brave brute had given up all hope. The 
boy's heart sunk within him. He drew back, 
further and further, into the deep seat ; with a 
feeling, so unworthy of a man ; so unlike any 
that he had ever known before,— through sickness 
— through sorrow — that he would have wept 
aloud, perhaps, if he had been altogether alone. 

" ' Seems to take it ruther unkindly, judge, 
hey ? * — said one of the people. " Home sick, 
a few — I guess — don't you ? — -wonder who that 
air baby-faced gal was ; nation white, I guess — 
never seed any body half so white afore ; love sick 
— I guess. I say, you — sweetheart o' your'n, I 
guess — hey V 

" ' If you are speaking to me, sir/ said our boy; 
starting bolt upright ; pushing away his hat ; 
and showing his lighted eyes — the brightness 
whereof was rather alarming :— ' If that's for me, 
sir , you'd better look out,' 



296 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

" ' Nation !' 

" ' A leetle on the huffy order, I guess ! aint 
you ? — Like to have a tussel, may be ? wouldn't 
ye ? — or a good clever game o' rough an' tumble ?' 

" ' Yes ! with all my heart — yes ! — would you ? 
If you would, Mister, what's your name, you have 
only to say another word about my sweetheart, as 
you call her ; — baby-face ! — -ye great black lookin' 
lubberly beast.' 

" The convulsive agitation of his mouth was 
quite enough. They grew still, immediately, on 
every side of him ; not so much from fear, as 
from curiosity to know more of ' sich a quair 
funny sort of a feller.' One gave a whistle of sur- 
prise ; another, a sort of low, good humoured growl ; 
after which they, and all the rest, were quiet. 

" Here was the boy's first essay in outbraving 
' real imperdence.' He saw the advantage of it, 
long before they parted ; for, all the passengers 
came to be on good agreeable terms with him— 
pleasant, free, and sociable, without being saucy." 

" The ' stage' was a long, rough-built, heavy 
waggon ; capable of ' accommodating ' twelve or 
fourteen people inside— they carry no outside pas- 
sengers, up to this day, in that country. There 
was only one way of getting up to it, or into 
it ; and that was, over the backs of the horses, by 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 297 

climbing, or by storm. It would go — lumbering, 
pitching and jolting over the almost impassable 
roads, of the country, with a wheel, or two, for 
ever in the air — at the rate of about forty miles 
a-day — f more or less.' 

" There were nine live passengers aboard ; with 
a great heap of rubbish ; and a large dead hog. 
Eight of the former, were human beings; the 
ninth, a sucking pig. Walter, unhappily for him, 
was rigged out, in all his go-to-meetin' finery ; 
unhappily, because, he never appeared so like a 
great, overgrown, awkward country boy, as when 
he was thus equipped ; nor ever to such advan- 
tage, as in his old clothes ; a striped woollen 
frock — or short gaberdine ; with his collar open : 
— his throat naked — and his rich, loose hair 
huddled about his neck. 

" He wore, now, a large, broad brimmed, low 
crowned, wool hat — newly ironed up, for the 
occasion — you might have seen your face in it 
— ' a leetle o' one side' — with a flaming brass 
buckle, in front ; a dimity waistcoat — striped with 
dark yellow — it had been a petticoat of his mo- 
ther's — a part of her wedding dress — the flaps 
hanging half down to his knees ; cow-hide shoes 
— newly greased with a famous preparation of the 
lime, for keeping out water — -which left a * smooch' 



298 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

upon whatever they came near ; a pair of huge 
buckles in them, too ; — his hair gathered in a 
club, and bound up, with a piece of sky-blue 
' worsted ribbon ;' a large, bright, silver brooch, 
firmly skewered into the bosom of a coarse, clean, 
good-looking shirt, — which it held, as it were, by 
the teeth — so that his white skin was visible 
above, and below it. His look was that of a 
lubberly country boy; — a ' jinooine' Brother Jona- 
than — going forth, from his home, to ( undertake ' 
a school for the winter, wherein he may retail out 
such learning, as he has been able to ' lay in/ at 
wholesale, the summer before, at some of the 
schools, academies, colleges or universities, of 
North America. 

" The passengers were very still, after the re- 
buff, which Waiter bestowed on his very curious 
companion. They were all, or the greater part of 
them, nearly or quite asleep ; their heads bob- 
bing about, all the way, as if there were no par- 
ticular' owners for them ; — all was quiet — as quiet, 
in truth, as it could be, in such a carriage, 
where the smothered squealing of the pig ; the 
noisy rattling of the iron ware — with all the ' an' 
so forths, an' so forths, and so forths,' — were 
quite enough to drown the voice of an ordinary 
man, while in ordinary conversation. They got 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 299 

along very well— very— till a sudden, rough jolt, 
brought all their heads together, at once, with a 
tremendous crash, on the ' near ' side of the car- 
riage ; the other being e up a tree ' — that is— 
lodged on the top of a large, rugged stump, so 
that, for half a minute, or more— the * stage ' 
appeared in a sort of irresolute balancing humour ; 
as if undetermined whether to go ' clean over, 
slap' — or only part way. 

" The pig squealed as if the devil was in him : 
the passengers awoke; started up— got loose 
from each other ; and crawled out, as well as 
they could, over the horses, into the deep heavy 
mud ; making wry mouths ; growling — -limping 
— and chafing their limbs; all of them being 
more or less beaten, bruised, or * banged/ by the 
lumber, and stuff, which, like themselves, were 
inside passengers over the same outrageous, abo- 
minable road «>" 

They soon recover from this mishap, only to be 
plunged into a still greater, and one which is re- 
lated with equal truth and spirit. They are going 
down a horrible hill at a fierce rate, in order, as. 
the driver says, " to keep the cattle out o' the 
way o' the stage," when suddenly it is discovered 
that some fire from their pipes has got among the 
straw about their feet. 



300 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

" The horses took fright. Away they sprang, 
at full speed, in the midst of the uproar, taking 
the heavy carriage off the ground, at every jump. 
Our hero leaned back into the seat, and held his 
breath ; for he felt as if they were tipping over, 
all the way — as they went — leap after leap — 
escaping the uptorn trees, by a sort of miracle, 
every time ; and shaking the driver, rudely enough 
to dislocate every bone of his body ; for his feet 
rested on a foot-board, which, in America, was 
attached, of course, to the rough axle-tree : Away 
they sprang — away — away — while the harder the 
poor old man shrieked, in his fear, the harder they 
galloped. — * Fire ! fire !' cried he — ' murder ! mur- 
der !' 

" ' Stop his throat, for the love o' God — whoa ! 
whoa !' said the driver — leaning backward into 
the carriage ; ' whoa ! whoa !' straining every 
muscle of his body, till he was red in the face ; 
and speaking through his teeth. — * Whoa ! whoa ! 
stop his throat ! whoa ! there ; whoa ! gag him ! 
gag him ! — It's all over with us, if they get more 
head way ! — Steady ! steady ! — Jam a cloth down 
his throat; or a hankycher ! Whoa! whoa — 
Choke him.' 

" ' There we go '.—there we go !•' — repeated the 
old man ; breaking loose from Walter, and trying 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 301 

to throw himself out of the carriage, over the 
heads of the horses. — ' There we go !' 

" ' Say your last prayer !— nothin' but a merigle 
can save us ! ' — cried the driver, with a voice 
of horrible consternation. — ' There we go ! — sure 
enough !' 

" They were approaching a sharp tarn— with a 
precipice on the left ; and a steep, high bank, or 
wall, on the right ; all the way incumbered, or 
broken up, with huge pine trees, or stumps, 
which threw their prodigious roots quite across 
the road. 

" ' Driver ! driver ! ' — ' What say ? ' — ' Keep 
to the right ; will you ? ' — e What for ? ' — ' Upset 
us, if you can — pitch us into the bank, there !' 
— ' What for ? ' — ' Why ; there's no other hope ; 
no other way to save a soul o' the cargo.' — The 
driver stood up. — ' Hourra, now ! hourra !' cried 
he ; ' hourra, now — lay holt here ; lay holt, every 
one o' you !' — throwing the reins behind him, into 
the carriage. — ' Whoa — gently, gently, there — 
gent— ly— ' 

" ' Hang on ! — hang on ! — by G — d, I'll treat.' 
— 'Hourra!' — ' So will I '— ' So will I ! '— 
' Hourra, now ; hourra ! ' — The reins gave way ; 
the driver fell back ; the carriage heeled off; the 



302 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

horses tried in vain to stop — the leaders falling 
back upon their fellows, when they saw the pre- 
cipice, with such power, that, for a moment — a 
single moment — while the strong leather cracked 
with every plunge — they were all in a heap, to- 
gether : — It was a moment of trial, though ; for 
the carriage was tumbling over upon the horses, 
while they, as if quite sensible of their danger, 
were staggering about, with distended nostrils ; 
and large, dilated eyes — irresolute — convulsed — 
and frightfully weak — breathing, as if they had 
been over-board — swimming for their lives ; a 
moment of trial ; but no more — a pause, only ; 
for, another cry being heard — a cry of despair, 
from the poor old man — up went all their heads, 
together ; and off, they started, anew. 

" ' Lord have mercy upon us !' cried out all the 
passengers, with one voice, when they saw the 
heavy manes of the horses fly up ; and heard the 
crash that followed. 

" ' Amen,' said Walter, very quietly ; locking 
his uplifted hands ; holding his breath ; and 
shutting his eyes, like a coward, — as he thought 
of Edith ; and of what her insupportable anguish 
would be, when they should come to hear of his 
untimely fate. 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 303 

" ' Amen — Arae n !' — devoutly responded a 
steady, clear voice, at his elbow ; — * our Father, 
who art in heav ' 

"The prayer was unfinished : the horses leaped 
forward, again, as if a thunderbolt had fallen 
among them ; two of the four broke loose from 
the tackling ; — one of which, went over the pre- 
cipice, backward, with a scream— the other was 
killed upon the spot ; while the remaining pair 
struggled and plunged, with terrible force, under 
the crushing weight of the carriage. — It gave 
way. — 'There we go! — over — over!' cried out 
all the passengers, with a shriek of dismay. — 

' There we go !' and — over they did go, 

sure enough !" 

They go over on the right side, that is to say 
not over the precipice, and then, in conferring to- 
gether on their escape, and the circumstances which 
preceded it, the following history takes place. 

" ' Oh — yes! — and that air infarnal kag !' re- 
sponded another. — ' I do marvel what's in it ; — 
live eels, I guess ? — -How it skipped an' bobbed 
about, among our toes.' 

'* The driver was that moment examining a 
small keg with great apparent solicitude. Every 
hoop and every stave underwent a trial with him. 



304 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

" ' Gold dust, I should think/ said Walter, 
who had often read of it in story books, and 
poetry : — ' Gold dust, I should think, by his care 
of what has been spilt among the straw.' 

" ' GooP dust ! fiddle-de-dee ! — some sort o' 
seed, more like — ' quoth his neighbour ; — * some 
sort o' seed, I guess ; — nothin' that's made o' 
gool' is ventered here, on this road, Mister. — 
I say — you, driver — driver ! — I say ! — what's 
in that air kag ; hey ? — It aint yong'un seed ; 
is it?' 

" ' Inyon seed ! — pooty feller, you ! never met 
with any peep seed afore, I guess? have ye?' 

" ' Peep seed ! you cross, ill tempered, good for 
nothing whelp !' cried our hero ; springing at him : 
— ' speak out, sir, speak ! tell him, what's in that 
air keg?' 

" - Let go o' my throat! let go o' my throat !' 

" ' Let him go,' said a young, serious man, with 
a mild, but very determined air.- — ' Let him go, 
sir — would you strangle him? — How can he 
speak, now?' 

" ' Never, sir — never — till he speaks out ; alive 
or dead. He can do it, well enough : and if he 
dooze not, before I count five ; by the God that 
made me, I'll pitch him over the precipice, after 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 305 

the horse ; — aye — and you too, Mr. Hale, if you 
interfere — we'll go, together.— What's in that air 
keg, sir ? — one — two — three ' 

" ' Powder — powder — nothin' but powder!' 
shrieked the ruffian, feeling himself urged, with 
irresistible power toward the cliff. 

" ' Powder !'— echoed our boy — with a sudden 
leap of the heart ; — followed by a deadly sick- 
ness : — ' Powder !' — his arms falling away from 
the collar of the wretch, as he spoke ; — ' not gun- 
powder, surely!' 

" 'Ah ; — but I rather guess it is, though !' an- 
swered the driver ; sneaking off, toward a place 
of safety, with a malignant shake of the head, 
which our hero was never able to forget, and had 
soon cause enough to think of. 

"'Gunpowder! — you don't say so!' faltered 
out one of the smokers ; — ' not gun-powder ! — 
why ! ' — ' Possible !' quoth his companion — 
gasping for breath — dropping his under jaw 7 — 
and letting his lighted pipe fall out of his mouth, 

into the mud. — — ' Possible !' ( My stars ! — 

Ugh !'" * # # ###### 

" America — as every body knows, there — is the 
land of liberty and equality ; ' the land of the 
brave; and the home of the free.' Wherefore, 
it would be no easy matter for a person travelling, 

x 



306 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

to persuade a fall-blooded republican ' driver,' that 
a keg of gunpowder — and a live pig — with warm- 
ing pans — cod fish, broad axes, and hollow ware, 
— paid for inside, were not fit company for half a 
score of human beings, paid for, inside — with 
lighted pipes. "— Vol. II. pp. 40—68. 

Nothing in its way can be more admirable than 
this whole description of the boy's travel in the 
" stage." It is kept up with equal force and 
spirit, through forty or fifty pages more. Perhaps 
we cannot do better than contrast this scene of 
absolute, literal truth, with one of a somewhat 
different class. It will serve to shew that our 
author is not wedded to any particular style of 
composition, but is equally at home in the cloudy 
regions of german mysticism as on the face of 
the common earth. The following, though wild, 
extravagant, and incoherent, is full of eloquent 
and passionate beauty. It refers to the hero's 
first introduction to those scenes with which all 
great cities abound. 

" They led him to a sofa. They sang — they 
played. His perceptions grew confused. He 
thought over all the stories of wood women — 
fairies — witchcraft — and sorcery. A thousand 
bright flashes of early dreaming, issued from his 
young heart, whenever he shut his eyes. The 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 307 

room — the flowers — the furniture — -the lemon tree 
— the birds — the pictures — the pretty goblins— 
they were like the paraphernalia of sleep, to 
him. He was half prepared, for their vanishing ; 
half prepared, for a change, whenever he opened 
his eyes, whereby they would become giants — 
or dwarfs ; or he would find himself at home- 
after all — in his own bed. He grew sleepy- 
faint. He felt as if sweet lips were saying a 
sweeter incantation over him. He lay down — 
he gave himself up, in spite of Harry's admoni- 
tion, without one word of prayer, to the drowsy, 
dangerous quiet of the place. He slept— he 
dreamt ; a small, soft hand was put upon his 
forehead. He awoke — he started up. The pres- 
sure was gentle — affectionate ; but, unpreme- 
ditated — involuntary, perhaps ; yet, he started 
up, quivering with preternatural fervour, through 
all his frame. His head swam — his heart reeled 
—his limbs were powerless. He knew not where 
he was — nor what he meditated : a glowing face 
— and large eyes were visible through the dim 
light; a profusion of hair— and lips, that pur- 
sued his. He felt, as if he were yet sleeping ; he 
strove to awake. He felt as if he had gone back, 
alive, to the day of mystery and fable : as if, with 
all the power and prerogative ; all the grandeur 

x 2 



308 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

— all the bravery, of a man — he had become «, 
little child, again ; more credulous, than ever ; 
believing, as then, whatever he read — whatever 
was told him ; haunting the chambers of the sea, 
whenever he slept — like that of his own mother, 
when he was awake. In short — his heart was full 
of woman — his head, of wine. 

" Do ye marvel that he grew dizzy? Do ye 
wonder that he grew faint ? — or, that, he breath- 
ed, after a time, as if his heart were in travail 
— every sob, a throe ? — or, that, when he awoke, 
there was a strange trouble in his blood ? — or, 
that, his hand fell, with convulsive eagerness 
upon what he knew, by the touch, to be the hand 
of a beautiful woman? or, that, he pursued it, 
when it fled, with a cry of passionate longing ? 
— or, that, when it should have been hastily 
withdrawn from his bold — presumptuous — dis- 
tracted pressure — it only trembled with fear — 
until the alarm of its pulse rang, like electricity, 
through every fibre of his frame? — or, that, a 
swift blindness fell upon his eyes ? — or, that, he 
heard a loud singing all about him, in the air ? 
— or, that, he would have spoken — but could 
not — because of his youth — because of his in- 
tegrity — because of his great innocence — because 
of his love — in the deep, dreadful, hot, luxury 



BROTHER JONATHAN. 309 

of his thought?— or, that, he drew nigh to the 
tempter — and was about — boy, though he was 
— to transfer the holy kiss of tried, innocent love, 
to the lips of pollution ? — or, that, he knew not 
where he was — nor what he wanted ? — or, that, 
he grew blind, as it were, and sick, with passion ? 
— or, that, he was gathering the strange woman 
— the woman of beauty — into his untroubled, 
pure bosom, with all his power — in a sort of 
delirium — a paroxysm — a wild, ungovernable 
fervour, such as he had never felt before, in all his 
life ? — or ; do ye marvel, that on seeing — or 
dreaming that he saw — the apparition of Edith 
— his own — his beloved Edith — pale and sorrow- 
ful — before he had betrayed her to the woman ; 
before he had profaned her innocent love ; sacri- 
ficed her ; violated her image, in his heart ; or 
sinned, verily, beyond forgiveness ; do ye marvel 
that he, the brave boy, when the spirit of Edith 
went by him, thus — awoke, all at once — like a 
giant ; sprang away, from the enchantress, with a 
sharp cry ; and shook her off— the delicate, bad 
creature — from his bosom — as if she were a thou- 
sand festering serpents ? 

" Thus did he ; thus — and more like a timid 
girl, starting from the thraldom of love, just in 
time to save herself; trembling — full of sorrow 



310 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

— and abhorrence — grief — gratitude — and shame: 
crushed with a sense of her degradation — at 
having been — for a moment, perhaps, under the 
influence of mortal treachery ; or, at having felt, 
for a moment, perhaps — the unholy contagion of 
a bad love : thus did he — more like such a girl 
— at such a time — than like a young, adven- 
turous man — half crazy, with impure passion ; 
half desperate, with wine. Thus did he — the 
noble boy. He shook off the woman — went 
forth, into the middle of the floor ; smote upon it, 
with his foot — until the house trembled — until 
a thousand echoes rang through the deserted 
chambers, with a noise, like that of a multitude 
ascending the stairs — or mustering on every side 
of him. 

" But he was alone. Harry had left him, asleep. 
The woman would have stayed him ; but, when 
she looked into his pallid face, there was that, in 
it — so awful — so serious — that she went away 
abashed, and utterly confounded ; weeping with 
shame — perhaps, with sorrow — and covering her 
own face, with her hands. 

" ' Farewell,' said he ; ' I know not who you 
are — nor what. I only know that you have pur- 
sued me — till I have come to hate myself. A 
little more, and I should have hated you ; all 



BROTHER JONATHAN, 311 

mankind — all womankind. Nevertheless — I for- 
give you.' 

" He departed."— Vol. II. pp. 412—417. 

Where there is any of this kind of writing the 
reader may be pretty sure of finding plenty. 
What we have given above is a fair specimen of 
that portion of it which the present volumes con- 
tain. In fact, they include many shorter pas- 
sages, and several long scenes, belonging to the 
above class of writing, which, together with 
much extravagance, blend not a little of extra- 
ordinary beauty. 

We cannot close our account of this singular 
work without unequivocally expressing the very 
high admiration that we feel for the powers which 
it indicates : for as an indication alone of intel- 
lectual power can we accept it — not as a display. 
Without being so valuable a work as some others 
that might be named among the late productions 
of our republican rivals, it is, without any com- 
parison whatever, the strongest evidence of high 
talent which that country has hitherto put forth. 
But whether or not to regard it as a sure promise 
of greater things from the same source, is more 
than our total want of information respecting its 
writer enables us to determine. If Brother Jona- 
than is the production of a new hand, and is 



312 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

thrown off in that reckless and unpremeditated 
manner which the construction of its plot, &c. 
seems to indicate, we would at once pronounce it 
to be the precursor of works of the very highest 
class, and its writer as destined to occupy a per- 
manent place in the very foremost rank of his 
age's literature. But if — as we are half-tempted 
to fear, from a certain air of practice which pre- 
vails throughout — it is only one of many similar 
incoherences which its writer has been inflicting 
upon his countrymen till they will bear them no 
longer, and he has now come over to try his 
fortune upon our less fastidious and experienced 
judgments, it is a very different matter. In short, 
if this is a first production in its way, and its 
author is young, we should be accused of extra- 
vagance if we were to express the extent of our 
hopes as to what may follow it. But if its au- 
thor has written two or three such works, we 
almost despair of his ever writing a better. 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA;* 



A TALE OF THE GREEN-WOOD-SHADE, 



BY L H- 



[As far as the writer of the following story is acquainted with 
the history of the persons mentioned in it, there is no actual 
foundation for its details. But he seems to have read somewhere, 
within these few years, a tale in verse, the recollection of which 
may have suggested it to him. And he believes, also, that Mde. 
de Genlis, in her half historical romance of " Petrarque and 
Laure," has imagined a passion between Boccaccio and the 
daughter of king Robert of Naples.] 

Of all the beautiful vales that wind about among 
the beautiful hills of Italy, (like blue veins about 
a young maiden's bosom), there is none so beau- 

* Whence, or for what reason, this paper became a " Rejected" 
one, I have not been able to learn. Perhaps it was, that some 
editor, more sagacious than need be, fancied the writer was hoax- 
ing him. And in fact, I must confess that I am a little puzzled 
by the paper myself. It professes to be written by the gentleman 
whose initials it bears ; and I am bound to offer it as such. But 



316 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

tiful as that through which the beautiful Arno 
lapses along beautifully, towards the blue Medi- 
terranean. 

We have passed a whole short year in this vale, 
reader, and can hit upon no other so compen- 
dious method of making thee feel its charms, as 
that of reiterating upon it the above charming 
epithet, — which even the language of Italy itself 
cannot equal, for a certain lingering and liquid 
softness. 

Among other favours which the Arno confers 
upon this vale, in return for the privilege of 
gliding along for ever through its green loveliness, 
is that of writing its name upon it : Val d' Arno, 
or Valdarno. At a certain point of Valdarno, then, 
just where its scenery first begins to be most wild 
and cultivated, a great forest suddenly starts up 
almost from the river's edge, and goes frowning 
away towards the brow of an adjacent hill, where 

though it undoubtedly includes something of the peculiar man- 
ner of that amiable writer, it seems to me to include more that is 
not in his manner, but rather in one of the manners of another 
writer who has also contributed an avowed portion of this volume. 
The truth is, J am half inclined to suspect that an innocent little 
deceit has in this instance been practised, and that the story is in 
fact an imitation of one of these writers' style, by the other. 
But which is the imitated, which is the imitator, is more than I 
shall pretend to determine. — Editor. 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 317 

its rich cloud-like depths seem to hang upon the 
otherwise soft and smiling elevation, like masses 
of dark hair upon the forehead and cheeks of a 
sweet English woman. 

At the period of our story, Giovanni Boccaccio 
is said to have held the office of Bard or Minstrel 
at the court of Robert, King of Naples. And 
whether from disgust at the hollow pageantries 
of a court life, or from that morbid turn of feel- 
ing which poets and scholars are so apt to give 
way to when they are forced to mix in the merely 
worldly throng of which they can never form a 
part, — he had for a time escaped from all inter- 
course with the world of cities, and was fancying 
himself content to keep no other company than 
his own full thoughts, and those fine echoes and 
answers to them which he seemed never to listen 
for in vain among the dim glades and under the 
twilight gloom of this " forest old." 

That the feeling which could prompt the gay 
and galliard, the lively and loving Boccaccio to 
take up his abode in the solitary hut of a moun- 
tain shepherd, must have been a morbid one, who 
can doubt ? Perhaps — for he was very young at 
the time we speak of, and had not yet begun 
to hanker after any other immortality than that 
" for ever" which enters into every vow of love 



318 REJECTED ARTICLES, 

which young lovers are in the habit of pro- 
nouncing — perhaps some Florentine beauty had 
looked inimically upon him, just when she had 
given him least cause to expect it, — as even 
Italian beauties will. Or perhaps she had smiled 
consentingly, just as he had begun to revel in the 
pleasant pains of a lover's despair ; and this had 
put him out of sorts : for your youthful, and es- 
pecially your poet lover, is hard to please at any 
moment or after any fashion but his own. 

Be this as it may, certain it is that our hero 
had fallen out with everything in the world, but 
his pen-knife, — armed with which he used to 
betake himself every morning to the dim recesses 
of the old wood we have just mentioned, and 
carve himself out a wayward and wanton sort of 
comfort, by cutting verses upon the smooth bark 
of the great Linden trees. 

There was a particular part of the wood in 
which a noble company of these trees flourished 
together, each adapting its growth to that of all 
the rest, in a manner which, if any but a lover 
had observed it, might have furnished a model 
from which the members of more pretending com- 
munities might have taken a lesson. It was to 
this spot that our sylvan malcontent chiefly 
directed his steps ; and as practice makes perfect 



BOCCACCIO AND IIAMETTA. 319 

in all things — even in writing poetry with a pen- 
knife — there is no knowing how far his efforts 
might have gone, towards the demolition of this 
fine family of " green-robed senators," — (for a 
Linden tree cannot live without its bark, any 
more than a lady's lap-dog), — but for a circum- 
stance which we are now to relate. 

Arriving about noon one day at his accustomed 
haunt, full, even to the tip of his pen-knife, of a 
sonnet he had composed as he came along, he was 
peering about rather impatiently for a fair sheet 
of bark on which to inscribe it — when lo ! he 
observed, with a feeling of half fearful surprise, 
that two or three of his most passionate lucubra- 
tions had been detached from their places, and 
fairly carried off by some invisible, and (to him) 
inconceivable agency ! 

He dropped his extended penknife among the 
long grass and wild flowers that grew about the 
roots of the trees — retreated a pace or two from 
the spot where he was standing, as if to assure 
himself that what he had seen was not an op- 
tical trick which his over-excited fancy was play- 
ing him — and the first half dozen lines of his new 
sonnet went as clean out of his head as if they had 
been written by somebody else. 

Recovered a little from his first surpiise, he 



320 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

began to cast about him for something like a ra- 
tional explanation of this seeming mystery. But 
none presented itself that was at all satisfactory. 
He believed the wood itself to be entirely free 
from human inhabitants, or even visitants, except 
himself. It was evident that the writing had not 
been defaced by any of the wild animals which he 
knew made their green dwellings in the forest, or 
even by any of the few shepherds and herdsmen 
who alone dwelt on its borders ; for, instead of 
being nibbled away irregularly by the teeth of the 
first, or carelessly cut and scraped off by the rude 
clasp-knives of the second, it had been detached 
in the most careful manner, by making an incision 
above, below, and on each side of the writing, 
and then peeling the whole off together, — leaving 
the inner surface of the trunk beneath as smooth 
and white as the back of a new shorn sheep. 

There was another circumstance, too, which 
perplexed our poet not a little. The particular 
sets of verses which had so strangely disappeared, 
were precisely those which he had piqued him- 
self upon the merit of. In short, the being, 
whatever it might be, which had thus made so 
free with some of his best things, was evidently 
not without a very pretty taste for poetry. 

This thought at any rate helped to restore our 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 



321 



wonderer to that state of easy self-complacency 
in which, notwithstanding his moody quarrel 
with the world, he was by no means slow to in- 
dulge himself, when his own poetry was in ques- 
tion 5 and, instead of perplexing himself further 
with an affair that seemed likely to baffle all im- 
mediate inquiry, he conned over his new sonnet 
again, and having recovered those portions of it 
which his late surprise had scared away, he em- 
ployed the rest of the day in carefully pen-knifing 
it down, at no great distance from the spot from 
which the others had so lately become Fugitive 
Pieces. He then sauntered slowly towards his 
evening retreat, — wondering all the way what could 
have become of his verses, but feeling less list- 
less and unhinged than heretofore, from the fillip 
which his spirits had received by the adventure of 
the morning. 

The next day found our poet earlier than usual 
among his Linden trees; on reaching which, how 
was his not yet abated surprise of yesterday in- 
creased, at finding that his last sonnet had follow- 
ed the missing stanzas, and that no trace of it was 
left, but the great white hiatus which indicated 
where it had been! 

He composed no more verses that day, but 
passed the whole of it in puzzling his head with 



322 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

vain conjectures about the mystery, and in de- 
vising the means of making it out. 

At last it occurred to him, (as it would two days 
before, to any one but a carver of love verses upon 
lime trees in an old solitary forest), that an act 
argued an agency, and that as an agent could 
not conveniently proceed without visible instru- 
ments, there could be no great difficulty in making 
out this important mystery, to any one who 
chose to take the pains of prying pretty closely 
into it. 

Our poet's measures were therefore taken imme- 
diately. But before putting them into practice, 
there was one thing to be considered. The pur- 
loiner of his poetry (for that there was a pur- 
loiner seemed now more than probable to our 
hero, after he had given two whole days' and one 
night's consideration to the subj ect !) in the first 
place evidently sought concealment ; and in the 
next place, was of too elegant and tasteful a turn 
of mind to be treated impertinently or cavalierly. 
Accordingly, our inquirer was tempted to postpone 
his investigation for a day or two, in order to see 
if chance might not give a natural turn to the dis- 
closure ; and in the mean time he determined to 
try the taste of his unknown critic once more, by 
another copy of verses, which were such particu- 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 323 

lar favourites with himself that he had not yet 
committed them to bark. He did so on this 
evening, and then went home, in lightsomer spirits 
than he had felt since he left Naples. 

On the following morning he left his bed of 
leaves almost as soon as the sun looked in upon 
it ; and after satisfying himself that he was by no 
means impatient to learn the fate of his last 
stanzas, he made his way towards the Linden 
trees by the most direct path he knew of; not, 
however, without loitering a little by the way, in 
order to convince himself that he was in no hurry : 
a piece of natural and innocent self-deceit, which, 
by the bye, cost him another whole day and 
night's increased curiosity and impatience ; to say 
nothing of its making him run the risk of catching 
his death of cold into the bargain : for at the very 
instant that he came, at a sudden turn of the 
path, upon the spot where his favourite Lindens 
flourished, he heard a rustling sound among the 
underwood at the extremity of the little glade, 
and caught a glimpse of a white vestment gleam- 
ing through the leaves, and saw a still whiter 
hand vanish away among them, and leave them 
quivering as if with pleasure at its touch. 

To couple this unlooked-for appearance with 
the equally unlooked-for ^-appearance of his 

y 2 



324 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

verses, was the affair of a moment. He flew to 
those which he had carved the evening before, and 
they were gone. 

Here, then, was the mystery explained at once ; 
but explained in a way to anything but satisfy 
our hero's curiosity. What was to be done in 
this case ? To follow the fair fugitive would be 
rude, since her wisli for concealment was evidently 
not coquettish, but sincere. And yet to rest 
satisfied with the discovery that his verses had 
not been spirited away by superhuman agency, 
was quite as little to be thought of. An alterna- 
tive presented itself, which promised to satisfy his 
curiosity without sacrificing his politeness ; and 
this he at once made up his mind to adopt. 

Though he felt that courtesy forbad him to pry 
into the comings and goings of this beautiful 
plagiarist, (for he had already invested her with 
every beauty under heaven,) he had evidently a 
perfect right to pass his evenings where he 
pleased ; and if he had a fancy, even, for sleep- 
ing in the open air these fine summer nights, and 
making his bed on the bough of a particular tree, 
there could be no doubt whatever that he was 
free to indulge it. Accordingly, he spent what 
might have seemed to anybody else a more than 
reasonable portion of the day in polishing into the 



BOCCACCIO AND FJAMETTA. 325 

most graceful and sparkling perfection a stanza 
touching the discovery of the morning. This he 
carved on a convenient spot, in his best manner/ 
and then returned to his hut, to make some little 
preparations for his intended alfresco. For, to do 
our poet justice, he was not one of those ill-condi- 
tioned people who neglect their personal comfort, 
and fancy they have taken a distaste to life and its 
pleasures, merely because they have happened to 
fall upon a particular mode of it which is naturally 
unsuited to them. In short, though his naturally 
exciteable temperament had led him to feel a sort 
of moody anger against certain things and people 
among whom he had lately been thrown, he was 
too young and full of health to be other than wise ; 
his veins were filled with a stream of wholesome 
red blood, which ran too freely up and down them 
ever to permit him to be blind to the beauties 
of that creation which he already felt that he 
himself was destined hereafter to assist in beau- 
tifying. 

We will not follow our hero back to his cottage 
dwelling, but fancy that he has been there, and 
provided himself with his little wallet of wine and 
eatables, not forgetting his graceful cloak of crim- 
son velvet, over the collar of which his rich chesnut 
curls used to drop clusteringly, when, a month 



326 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

ago, he justly reckoned himself among the gayest 
of Neapolitan gallants. We will fancy, too, that 
he has eaten his supper of fruit with more than 
usual gusto ; taken an additional cup of Cyprus, 
to keep out the cold air ; and comfortably esta- 
blished himself for the night, among the inter- 
twisted branches of the very tree on the stem of 
which he had carved his last piquant effusion. 

He was not much disposed to sleep ; for, to say 
nothing of the novel nature of his couch, with its 
everquivering curtains of green leaves, his thoughts, 
however pleasing, were of a nature to perplex ra- 
ther than soothe — they were so entirely without 
any particular point to rest on. So that, after 
puzzling himself for a long while, pleasantly enough, 
but to no purpose, as to who and what the owner 
of the white hand that he still saw perpetually 
vanishing away among the hazel leaves could 
possibly be, he was fain to yield himself up to that 
voluptuous waking dream which the sights and 
sounds all about him seemed expressly intended 
to excite. There was the misty and scarcely more 
than twilight gloom of the old wood. There was 
the soft Italian air, sighing gently among the 
leaves, and making them whisper and twitter to 
each other like birds at love-making. There was the 
scent of the wild-flowers, steaming up from below, 



BOCCACCIO AND F1AMETTA. 327 

like incense from so many fairy censers. And above 
all, there was the rich, deep- hearted voice of one 
solitary nightingale, (made solitary, perhaps, as our 
visionary fancied, by the same cause that made 
him so,) bathing all things in a bright flood of 
melody, as the moonlight bathes the waters. 

That such a state of things as this, was not very 
likely to set a poet to sleep, is pretty evident. 
Whether or not it did set ours to sleep, is more 
than we pretend to have been informed of. Cer- 
tain it is that he saw the new day blush to life, 
through the leafy lattice- work of his green bed- 
room — for the first time, by the bye, since he 
had taken to cultivate an intimacy with courtiers. 
And he had scarcely time to reckon how dearly he 
had been paying for the very equivocal pleasure of 
passing for a wit and a fine gentleman, before his 
whole soul and senses were absorbed in the object 
which now presented itself. 

In choosing out the spot that was to serve him 
for a bed-room and watch-tower in one, he had of 
course taken care that it should command a view 
of that particular point of the wood where the 
white hand had made its disappearance. And to 
this point, be sure, his eyes had been constantly 
directed, ever since the light had given him leave 



328 



REJECTED ARTICLES. 



to see it ; and directed so intensely, that, to say- 
truth, they had no less than three times created 
the object they were in search of. So that at last, 
when that object did come in reality, he was by 
no means sure that they were not for the fourth 
time making a fool of him. But who shall de- 
scribe his wondering and breathless attention, 
when, as he gazed, that still emerging hand was 
followed by a foot to match ; and then, after a 
moment's pause, by a face looking like a fawn's 
half fearfully from out the leaves, that seemed to 
crowd about it lovingly; and then, after another 
moment's pause, the whole form emerged from 
among the closing bushes, and having stood for 
a-while as if to listen if there was any other sound 
than that made by the coming together of the 
leaves, stepped forward on tip-toe, with a hushing 
motion of the right hand, and with half-open 
listening lips, — the very picture, as our poet 
thought, of some fabled creature, born of the air, 
the twilight, and the leaves. 

Alas ! it had been well for both if she had been 
such ! It had spared many a pang to two loving 
hearts, that should by rights have been lapt for 
ever in the Elysium of their own gentleness ! It 
had — but stay — we had not need anticipate. The 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 329 

sad part of our story will come soon enough of itself, 
and will last long enough, without our letting it 
interfere with the happy part. 

There was a hushing silence all about, as the 
beautiful creature kept advancing — every now and 
then pausing for a moment, and looking round 
half playfully, half timidly, towards the spot from 
which she had emerged, as if fearful of being seen 
or pursued ; while our poet kept gazing at her more 
and more intently, as she came nearer and nearer 
to the spot above which he was situated. 

At last he saw the lady — (for that she was a 
lady — a very woman — he was soon pretty well 
convinced, if by nothing else, by the eager cours- 
ing of his own blood through its channels, and 
the tingling sensation which it seemed to carry 
with it, even to the very tips of his fingers) — he 
saw her approach the very tree in the branches of 
which he was couching, and at last come to a full 
stop before it. 

His heart beat awfully. It fairly frightened 
him with its pertinacious knocking : for he had 
never felt anything of this kind in the presence of 
those court beauties among whom he had gained 
what little experience he possessed in matters of 
love. It beat — and beat — and his breath came 



330 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

shorter and shorter — and he grew sick with a sort 
of faint longing, for — he knew not what — unless it 
was, to drop from his concealment at the feet of 
that fair creature, and tell her that the poet whose 
poor verses she had come all that way to read (all 
the way from Florence, for anything he knew to 
the contrary) was there at hand, ready to pour 
out whole floods of them, with which the bare 
sight of her sweet presence had filled his soul to 
overflowing. 

Meanwhile, the object of this unpronounced 
rhapsody was standing almost immediately be- 
neath the silent rhapsodist, quietly perusing the 
effusion of yesterday. She read it twice from be- 
ginning to end, before she perceived the allusion 
it contained to the disappearance of its fellows. 
But when she did perceive this allusion, into what a 
pretty blushing perplexity it cast her ! She felt as 
if the poet himself was present in his verses, and was 
gazing full upon her, as she gazed on them ; and 
she half turned round, and made a movement, as 
if she would have fled before that eager glance. 

Our poet saw her, and was ready to drop from 
out his hiding place at the sight ; for he thought 
that if once that vision melted away from before 
his rapt senses, (for now that the first rush of his 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 331 

young blood had ceased, he began to fancy it a 
vision again,) he should never either behold it 
again, or be able to bear the loss of it. But 
she turned again, and stood still to re-peruse 
the verses ; and he was again still as a statue. 

She could scarcely (as he thought) have had 
time to read the first couplet again, before a 
thought seemed suddenly to strike her. She 
looked away from the stem on which the verses 
were graven — felt about her slender waist hurried- 
ly, as if for something that was concealed in 
her girdle — found it-— stepped up towards the 
tree eagerly — and placing one of her white hands 
leaningly against the dark trunk, began to move 
the dainty fingers of the other above and on each 
side the spot where the verses stood, 

There was no time to be lost. She was evi- 
dently about to carry them and herself off to- 
gether; and now that her furtive visits to the 
wood had been noticed, she would of course never 
repeat them, and he should equally of course never 
see her again. 

This latter thought brought back all his self-pos- 
session ; and his recollection that she was a mere 
woman, and not a vision, came back with it. The 
next moment she started almost " like a guilty 



332 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

thing," at the sound of rustling leaves and crack- 
ling branches over head ; and the next, Boccaccio 
was kneeling at her feet. 

Fiametta- (for that was the lady's name — in 
thinking of her gentle nature we had almost for- 
gotten that she had a name) Fiametta fairly cried 
out, from a momentary mixture of terror and sur- 
prise at this somewhat startling apparition : for, 
coyishness apart, it was a little startling, coming 
before her as it did in the midst of a solitary wood, 
when she was thinking of nothing less. But we 
must do her the injustice to say, that she did not 
perform this little female feat by any means after 
the most approved method in such cases made 
and provided by our modern representatives of 
romance heroines, either on the stage, or among 
the leaves of the circulating library. The truth is, 
she did not perceive anything very frightful in the 
sight of a graceful human form, bending silently 
at her feet, in that attitude of adoration which 
she had been taught to adopt herself, when she 
sent up her innocent prayers to the unseen giver 
of good ; and therefore, after the first instinctive 
movement of surprise, she did not see any reason 
whatever for falling into that passion of tears, 
screams, and terrified supplications for pity and 



BOCCACCIO AND FI.AMETTA. 333 

forbearance, which undoubtedly ought, according 
to all rule, to have been the immediate consequence 
of her situation. 

If indeed the object which she saw couching 
before her, with its bright eyes eagerly fixed upon 
hers, had been a young tiger instead of a young 
man, the abovenamed mode of receiving its atten- 
tions might have been natural enough, however 
unlikely to answer its intended end. But under 
the " existing circumstances," we cannot but 
think that our heroine acted the more natural 
part, and certainly the more agreeable one, in 
merely uttering a faint hurried cry, like that of a 
bird scared from its covert, and then bounding 
back for a space, and shrinking up into herself, as 
it were, as she gazed silently upon the silent being 
before her. At the same time, her countenance 
shewed all the marks of the prettiest wonderment 
in the world ; but a wonderment, withal, by no 
means either angry or terrified. 

But what is our poet doing and saying all this 
while? Why, not moving a jot from his first 
attitude, nor uttering a single word ! And yet 
(for we must not conceal the truth) he had knelt 
at ladies' feet before now, and was never accused 
of any lack of words or impediment of utterance 
on such occasions. 



334 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

In fact, the loves and beauties of a court and 
city life — even the court of the excellent King 
Robert, and the city of Naples itself — however 
pleasant and proper they may be, are something 
different from those which are to be met with 
among woods and glades : that is to say, when 
any are to be met with among the latter places at 
all. And our poet was not the person to pass over 
that difference, or fail to appreciate it. In the 
gentle yet blooming form of Fiametta, he beheld 
what he had never seen before, even in fancy ; 
though he could not help feeling,-— as he gazed on 
it, and it grew more blooming every moment by 
the blushes that broke out all over it, —that at least 
he ought to have seen it in fancy — else, of what 
avail was his poetry to him ? And he felt, for a 
passing moment, that poetry must be but a poor 
thing, if it could be put to open shame, and its 
votary be surprised and dumb-foundered, before a 
being who, from her air and appearance, (to say 
nothing of her strangely wild and sylvan attire,) 
had evidently never undergone the process of a 
lover's adoration before, and scarcely seemed to 
know what it could mean. 

But Boccaccio was luckily a poet, as well as a 
poet laureate. It is no wonder, therefore, that all 
these artificial modes of considering the matter 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 335 

presently melted away, as the bright creature 
before him recovered her natural and graceful 
self-possession, and without shewing any very 
determinate signs of departure, permitted him to 
rise from his knee, and address a few phrases to 
her (which, by the bye, we are bound to confess 
were by no means skilfully constructed ones) 
touching the situation in which the parties at that 
moment found themselves. 

Oh ! what bright looks and what tender talk 
now ensued, between this pair of gentle sylvans ! 
for each had been more than half enamoured of 
the other before they met, and one soft interchange 
of eyebeams stood them in stead of all the " give 
me leave to introduces" that they ought, by rights 
of wrong, to have waited for. In a word, each 
saw in the other what each had long been looking 
and sighing for without knowing it ; and of their 
now meeting eyes was born a love that lasted — too 
long. 

Thus far our information has enabled us to be 
tolerably precise, as to the " whereabout" of at 
least one of our lovers. And we are enabled to 
add, in regard to the other, that she had been 
living, ever since her birth, in a great solitary 
castle at the farther extremity of the old wood ; 
splendidly attended, and suffered to run almost 



336 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

wild about the grounds, and the adjacent forest, 
like a fawn. But she knew nothing of her birth 
and condition, any more than that her father 
sometimes visited her from a great way off, where 
he lived. Except him, she had seen no one that 
she could remember, but the various attendants 
that were about her. These treated her as their 
mistress in everything, except that they did not 
seem to like her to be out of their sight for long 
together ; — though we have seen that she had con- 
trived to be so two or three times, since her first 
discovery of the poetical Linden trees. 

All this she herself had told our (now her) 
hero, before they had been together a lover's half 
minute — that is to say a rather long half-hour. 
Moreover, she assured him that she was " very 
happy." But it appeared evident, from some- 
thing which dropped from her at the same time, 
that it was the happiness of a bird that is born 
in a great gilded aviary, and passes its life half 
in singing for joy at what it has, and half in 
pining after what it wants, without knowing what 
that is. 

If we piqued ourselves on being accomplished 
story-tellers, we should now proceed to edify the 
reader with an account of the various love scenes 
which followed the above meeting. But we do not. 



BOCCACCIO AND FI AM ETTA. 337 

If we pique ourselves on anything, *it is on 
having more respect for the passion of love 
itself, than desire of showing our skill in develop- 
ing its subtleties. So we shall here drop the 
curtain of concealment upon our gentle pair of 
wooers, and leave them to their own devices for 
a brief space — brief in the world's calendar — 
and brief even in their reckoning of it— but yet 
filled to overflowing with thoughts and images 
and sentiments, that spread themselves out 
endlessly over their whole after life, and made 
that little space seem longer than all the rest, 
and yet, somehow or other, briefer than a passing 
thought. 

No — never shall it be said that we sought to 
pry impertinently into that most holy of all pre- 
cincts, the spot which is hallowed by the pre- 
sence of two lovers. Let the ground all about 
them, as far as their bright eyebeams can dart, 
be sacred as Apollo's grove ! And let their 
words and looks and actions be as much their 
own as their un pronounced thoughts ! From 
us the reader shall never hear a whisper of what 
passed between these lovers, from the moment 
they became such. Let it suffice that they did 
become lovers — no " star-crossed " pair more true. 
But how their great love showed itself — whether 

z 



338 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

in mere eye-language, or sigh-music, or whispered 
words, 

" O dolci baci, o eosa altra piu cara," 

is more than we pretend to know a syllable about. 
No — we leave them to each other ; — the only com- 
pany lovers ever care to keep, and into which 
none else should intrude, even in fancy. 

Many, summer days had come and gone, and 
few of their suns had risen without seeing Boc- 
caccio and Fiametta on their way to meet each 
other, beneath the deep shade of the favourite 
Linden trees. When one evening, as our bard 
was musing within himself on a world of matters 
touching the future and the past, (that is to say, 
to-morrow and yesterday), but utterly unheeding 
of the present, a messenger reached him from his 
royal master at Naples, requiring his early pre- 
sence, to assist in giving eclat to a fete of unri- 
valled splendour, which was soon to take place 
at court, but the precise occasion of w T hich w 7 as 
enveloped in a sort of courtly mystery. 

This intelligence seemed to come upon our young 
dreamer " like a thief in the night." It waked 
him to a remembrance that there was something 
else in the world besides day-break, Linden trees, 
and lovers' talk. Not that this made him un- 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 339 

happy. On the contrary, it seemed to open be- 
fore him a new and almost endless vista of bright 
hopes — every one of which seemed stamped, as it 
were, with the image of his Fiametta : for he felt 
that she was his, though they had not yet ex- 
changed vows, or even recollected that there were 
such things as vows in the world. 

They must part for a time. That was evi- 
dent. But how should they meet again ? And 
when? And under what characters? And to 
what end ? These, and a whole string, or rather 
crowd of other questions, all came rushing upon 
his awakening fancy at once, and perplexing it for 
replies. 

" But away with fears and misgivings !" thought 
our ardent hero, in the buoyancy of youthful spirits 
that came back with his new-born hopes. ei My 
royal master is good and kind — and has loved, him- 
self, they say, and therefore will not turn ungently 
from the tale of my love — and I shall gain his quick 
leave to return here, and seek out the father of 
my sweet mistress — and we will tell him how 
truly we love — and he shall join our hands, under 
a rain of tearful blessings — and we will live 
here, in our own forest world— and I will so 
people it with the bright beings of my fancy, 

z 2 



340 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

and so beautify it with enamoured thoughts, that 
the lovers of after times shall make love-pilgrimages 
to the spot where Fiametta and Boccaccio met, 
and loved, and lived, and " died, he was go- 
ing to pronounce, like all the rest, triumphant- 
ly : but the thought struck a chill upon his heart, 
and put to flight in a moment all his fond ima- 
ginations ; for now that word had acquired a 
new and sad meaning. To die, meant, not to 
part from life — which had never yet entered 
his young imagination — but from Fiametta — 
which he was at this very moment called upon 
to do. 

There was no time for pondering on the summons 
he had received. If he set out on the day after to- 
morrow, he would only just have time to reach 
Naples by that appointed for the solemn festival. 
There was nothing left, therefore, but to prepare for 
his departure. So he breathed forth a blithe de- 
fiance to the sad images that a word had conjured 
up — thought away for a moment the interval be- 
tween ':' now" and that other " now" which was 
to make him so happy — and then laid himself 
down upon his simple couch, and fairly wept him- 
self to sleep with fond yearnings after the meeting 
of to-morrow. 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 341 

Let that meeting, more than all the rest, be 
sacred from sight. Let it suffice to know that 
the lovers parted, as they met, happy in each 
other's smiles, and still more happy in the sweet 
* tears that broke through them. And Boccaccio, 
without waiting for the morrow, hurried at once 
on his way to Naples. Nor did his journey lack 
the accompaniment of glad songs, which told of 
his happy return to the dark forest of Valdarno, 
and the dark eyed beauty that dwelt upon its 
borders. 

On reaching Naples the day before the festival, 
our minstrel (for he must now put on that cha- 
racter for a time) found that no one could give 
him any information, as to the occasion of this 
extraordinary gathering together of all the nobles 
of the kingdom at the court of King Robert ; 
(hough many strange rumours were afloat, assign- 
ing all sorts of incomprehensible reasons, and 
among others, that either a new queen was to be 
presented to them, or what seemed still more 
unlikely, (for the king had never been married,) 
an unexpected heir to the throne and kingdom. 

But all this, and even all the kind and eager 
greetings that met him on his return to Naples, 
(for he was a great favourite with everybody,) 



342 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

were " caviare" to our poet lover. He was 
thinking of when it would all be over, and he 
should be on his happy return to his now chosen 
retreat in the old forest of Valdarno, and within 
sighing distance of its sweet sylvan queen. Even 
the brilliant court beauties, that glided stately by 
him as he made his way through the well known 
avenues of the palace, with their earnest faces 
intent on the preparations for the morrow, did 
not stir his still thoughts a jot. They had never 
touched his heart ; and now that that was occu- 
pied, his senses were asleep. 

Meanwhile, time passes — and the morning of 
the festival is come — and the great hall of the 
palace is thrown open — and the courtly guests 
are arriving in companies of two, three, four, five 
together, and moving along silently over the velvet 
floor, — their stately plumes nodding and sway- 
ing about loftily till they reach their appointed 
places, and then, after one deep bend forwards, 
settling into a quivering stillness as their wearers 
finally take their seats — and the banquet tables 
are spread out profusely, with all but the hot 
refections that are to be put on when the feast is 
about to commence — and the tall guards stand 
motionless at the lofty entrances— and the trimly 



BOCCACCIO AND FJAMETTA. ' 343 

attired pages are passing their slim forms hither 
and thither daintily — and there is a hushing and 
eager stillness over the whole scene. 

Let us now look away for a moment, and then 
turn to the scene again, when the more lordly of 
the guests are arrived, and it has put on its whole 
rich completeness. Entering upon it from the 
lofty antichamber into which the great hall opens, 
we will place ourselves in the great gaping door- 
way itself, and look around us, just before the 
signal has been given for the banquet to com- 
mence. 

Right in front stretches out, strait as a line, 
the rich foot-cloth of white velvet painted all over 
with flowers, on which the king and his chief 
nobles have just passed up the hall to their high 
places. The rest of the floor is laid all over with 
crimson velvet ; and for a space on each side the 
centre foot-cloth, there is a vacancy, for the pages 
and attendants to move about freely. On each 
side of the hall, from end to end, are placed the 
tables at which are sitting, face to face, the 
second rank of guests, — the princely plumes and 
glittering tiaras of the dames alternating brilliant- 
ly with the dark dropping curls of the unbonneted 
cavaliers, all along the double line of perspective ; 
while, between these at intervals, as they move 



344 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

gracefully to address each other, we catch quick 
glances of the glittering table furniture, and see 
the pyramids of ornamental confectionary, and 
rich clusters of flowers, stand motionless. This 
part of the scene is finished, midway in height on 
each side, by the rich old tapestry which lines 
the walls, — the still and absorbing gloom of which 
contrasts quaintly with the busy brilliance which 
it shuts in. 

. Now, passing the eye upward a little on either 
side, it rests upon the temporary galleries which 
have been erected for the, third rank of guests, 
who must be content on this solemn occasion to 
be spectators merely. These galleries run parallel 
with the side tables ; their gorgeously carved and 
gilded fronts projecting just even with the inner 
line of the table guests below. Here, in these 
galleries, the show of beauty is still more brilliant 
than below ; the plumed heads and jewelled necks 
being crowded more closely together, and the 
seats rising one behind another as they recede ; so 
that the bright shew reaches up to the arched and 
painted ceiling of the hall. 

Midway between these galleries, from the cen- 
tre of the arched ceiling, hang the pyramids of 
light that illuminate the whole scene — circle 
rising above circle, and diminishing as they rise, 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 345 

till the upper one does but j ust leave space for the 
great twisted cord of crimson silk which supports 
them to pass through, and end underneath in a 
heavy pear-shaped tassel. 

Now, passing the eye downward again towards 
the farther end of the hall, ■ it falls upon the 
crowning richness of this bright scene. There, 
on a platform raised three steps above the floor, 
stands the royal table, bent inwards to a half 
circle, corresponding in size with the side ones. 
The surface we cannot see ; but from its hither 
edge depends a drapery of purple velvet, hanging 
down to the ground in heavy flutings — heavy with 
the rich embroidery-work of gold that runs round 
its lower edge. 

On this table stand no flowers, nor fantastical 
ornaments ; but only a gorgeous profusion of 
vessels, of every shape, and for every use that 
can serve at a great festival ; and all golden : — not 
polished and glittering, as if alive with the 
glancing lights that they fling back from them ; 
but heavy, massive, dead, as if they absorbed the 
rich yellow rays, and grew richer and heavier as 
they stood. 

Here and there among them, you may dis- 
tinguish jewelled cups and chalices, not sparkling, 
but glowing, with the mingled hues of the grate- 



346 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

ful emerald — the streaming topaz — the smiling 
ruby — the tender sapphire — the intense amethyst 
— the burning carbuncle — and the everchanging, 
infinite-hued opal. 

Round the furthermost side of this semicircle 
of clustering gorgeousness are seated (six on each 
side the centre) the twelve chief nobles of king 
Robert's dominions • and in the centre of all — 
distinguished from the rest only by his jewelled 
crown — sits the noblest of them all, no less in 
mind than in mien and bearing ; — the good, the 
gracious, the graceful, the kind-hearted, the high- 
thoughted king himself, — more kingly in his 
proud want of all pride than the merely vain ones 
of the earth can conceive. 

Almost immediately behind the king, (serving 
at once as a dark ground to set off, and a glowing 
richness to finish, that part of the scene), there 
falls from ceiling to floor, and from side to side of 
the hall, a drapery, full to an almost cumbersome 
profuscness, of crimson velvet — all of one uni- 
formly rich yet sober intensity, and only broken 
at top by a second set of draperies, looped up 
into heavy folds, which take a tent-like form in 
the centre, and are finished at the edge by a 
deep embroidered border, and a dropping fringe of 
gold. 



BOCCACCIO AND F1AMETTA. 347 

But enough of the mere externals of this 
courtly scene. Its gorgeous glories are dazzling 
our eyes, and keeping them too long away from 
our story. 

What has become of our minstrel, amidst all 
this splendour? Be sure he has not been for- 
gotten by his princely master and friend — made 
too princely by his high nature, not to feel, that 
a poet's presence graces the proudest feast, and 
that a poet's friendship adds a finishing lustre 
to the brightest crown. 

The place assigned to Boccaccio was one which, 
while it made him conspicuous in the eyes of the 
whole great assembly, shew r ed off the fine unifor- 
mity of the scene, by slightly breaking in upon it. 
To every other object on which the eye seemed 
called upon to rest, it might, by looking in an 
opposite direction, find a corresponding object to 
match. But the minstrel was seated alone, in 
that otherwise vacant space left on the raised 
platform by the inward sweep of the royal table. 
His gracious master himself had assigned him 
that place : for though he seldom remembered that 
there was but one king in his dominions, he 
never forgot that there was but one Boccaccio. 

There our young bard sat — his head modestly 
and gracefully bent forward — iiis eyes half-closed 



348 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

and cast upon the ground — his air half-abashed, 
half abstracted — and motionless as a marble 
statue. 

He was at that moment enjoying his glorious 
poet-privilege, of living in two states of being at 
once — each the best of all other states in its way. 
His imagination was soaring to the high and 
bright regions of poesy, in search of thoughts 
and images to fulfil his appointed task ; and his 
heart was walking humbly upon the green earth, 
far away among the Linden trees of Valdarno. 

We have not yet mentioned, that at the king's 
right hand stood a vacant chair. Here, then, no 
doubt, centered the high mystery of the hour. 
He turned, and gave a momentary glance at that 
unfilled seat — a flush of grave joy passed over his 
face — and he rose up. 

In an instant the busy hum was hushed, and 
an utter silence seemed to fall over the whole as- 
sembly like a misty cloud. 

After a moment's pause, and a look of proud 
pleasure cast all around him, the king spoke. 
His address was brief and simple ; not without 
that terseness which it seems in the very nature 
of kings to affect. He said, that he had to thank 
Heaven, and he did thank it night and morning, 
lor a reign which had hitherto been as happy to 



BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 349 

him as the sight of his people's happiness could 
make it. He said, that the love they had ever 
shewn for him was no less grateful to his heart, 
than that which he felt for them. He said, that 
one thing alone had seemed wanting to both, to 
complete the happy union between them, and 
make it a bond of mutual hope as well as joy. 
" That want," he added, after a pause, during 
which those who were near him might have seen 
a sweet thrill of delight tremble round his affec- 
tionate mouth, and his eyes fill with tears, which 
kept standing there while he spoke, — " That 
want, I fondly think, is this happy day to be 
supplied. For sixteen years I have been cherish- 
ing a treasure, which I have concealed from the 
eyes of the world with a miser's care ; but only 
till I could try its worth, and prove it to be a 
treasure, such as it becomes a beloved king to offer 
to the people of his love. I have proved it — I 
have found it that treasure — and I now present it 
to the admiring eyes, and commend it to the 
grateful hearts, of those whom it will, I fondly 
hope, one day help to make as happy as I have 
tried to make them." 

So saying, he turned half round where he stood 
— motioned with his hand — and as he did so, the 



350 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

great velvet curtain, that hung closed behind him, 
began to open in the centre, and gather itself 
away into gorgeous cloud-like folds towards the 
sides of the hall. At the same moment the king 
stepped back a pace or two, and led forth from 
beneath it, a form whose gentleness so tempered 
its beauty, that the gazers seemed to love it at 
once, even in the midst of the admiring awe and 
surprise that the first sight of it threw over 
them. 

" Behold," said Robert, " the daughter of your 
king !" 

In an instant a shout was uttered through the 
hall, that seemed to strike against the vaulted 
roof as if for escape. It shook the flames of 
the tapers till they quivered, and seemed to pene- 
trate through all the inanimate objects till they 
trembled as they stood. But its utterers scarcely 
heard it at all — so absorbed were they in the busy 
thoughts and feelings of the moment. 

There was one present who heard that shout — 
and it shook her heart with an unknown fear — and 
she sank silently into the seat that was near her — 
and held her father's hand — -and pressed it trem- 
blingly. 

There was another who heard it with a grave 



BOCCACCIO AND FI AM ETTA. 351 

joy — and it lifted him where he stood, and seemed 
to place him on that highest of thrones, built up 
of the hearts of his people. 

There was one who heard it not at all. Boccaccio 
had looked upon the scene with an indifference 
amounting almost to impatience, till towards the 
latter part of the king's address. But when he 
talked of having cherished a treasure, and " con- 
cealed it from the eyes of the world,' 7 a vague 
feeling of — he scarcely knew what — seemed to 
shoot through his frame, and shake it with a 
strange fear ; and his attention was instantly 
aroused to a pitch of intense fixedness. 

As the king paused, and motioned with his 
hand, a fatal presentiment seemed to seize upon 
Boccaccio's breast, as it were with bodily fingers, 
and almost stop his breath : but still he gazed at 
the great mysterious curtain, which now began 
to move. His eye seemed to pierce like an arrow 
through the opening. At length the heavy folds 
drew back, and he heheld — his gentle Fiametta ! 
— beheld her only for a moment — but long 
enough to feel that she was not his, and never 
could be. 

The icy coldness that had been for the last few 
moments gathering about his heart, seemed to 



352 REJECTED ARTICLES. 

settle into its very centre — a dull, dead weight 
fell upon his brain— his limbs trembled and 
bent beneath him as if palsy-stricken — and 
(unobserved) he sunk lifeless on the spot where 
he stood. 

That great sljout had no more power to wake 
him from his trance, than an infant's whisper. 
He never thoroughly awoke from it again. When 
the momentary surprise and joy of the assembly 
had subsided, and the banquet was about to com- 
mence, Boccaccio's situation was discovered, and 
he was taken from the hall. 

He left Naples that very night, and was heard 
of no more for many months. When he was heard 
of, it was in his native Florence ; where his fine 
spirit was flinging itself away recklessly, upon the 
loose pleasures of a licentious city. 

As for his sometime mistress, the splendours 
of a court life disturbed and perplexed her at 
first ; then dazzled and delighted her. But when 
she afterwards became the wife of the Prince of 
Arragon, (to whom her father had contracted 
her before he took her from her retreat), the 
twilight shades and smooth stemmed Linden 
trees of the old forest of Valdarno, haunted her 
fancy for ever, like a dream, and cast a dim hue 



BOCCACCIO AND Fl AM ETTA. 353 

of thought over her face, which did not make it 
less fair. 

And now, do not let us leave the conclusion of 
our story sadder than it need be. Let us believe 
that if Boccaccio had not, in his early youth, met 
with this ill-starred " affair of the heart," he 
would have kept aloof from those scenes into 
which his sad thoughts threw him, and the world 
have been without that famous " Decameron" 
which those scenes at once impelled and qualified 
him to write. 



TH E EN D 



LONDON: 

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